Everything You Need to Know About IOAO for CT Checkpoint Screening (and Why Airports Are Adopting It)

IOAO is a checkpoint workflow where AI reviews every CT baggage image and clears a portion of bags assessed as non-threatening. Officers see the un cleared bags, and get a clear mark when the AI detects a potential threat or anomaly. Operationally, AI detection provides a high and consistent detection, thus improving security, alongside increasing the number of bags the checkpoint handles per hour.

Airports typically evaluate IOAO against four outcomes: throughput (bags processed per hour), queue time during peaks, staffing efficiency (how many officers are required per a number of bags per hour), and consistency across shifts. By reducing manual review of benign images, IOAO helps reduce avoidable interruptions, stabilizes lane flow, and makes performance less dependent on constant staffing increases.

No. IOAO is delivered as a software integration into your existing CT environment. Alerts surface within the scanner’s native operator interface, so officers keep familiar workflows and supervisors keep established operating routines. For airport leadership, that translates to lower disruption and faster adoption compared with introducing new hardware or a separate application.

Because IOAO is software-based, deployment can be done in a workday. Rollout can then be staged by lane, checkpoint, or terminal to keep passenger impact low while teams build confidence.

Training is a couple of hours because officers are not learning a new application. The operational change is simple: officers review fewer benign images and spend more time resolving alarms.

Officers remain central to the process: when the system raises an alarm, a trained officer reviews the image and makes the final determination. IOAO is designed to engage humans at the highest-value moments. By reducing hours of benign-image exposure, officers can arrive at each alarm more focused, supporting faster resolution and steadier performance across long shifts.

In regulatory-based markets, IOAO can be deployed within regulatory frameworks when the underlying automated detection software is certified, and the operating concept is implemented under appropriate governance. SeeTrue is ECAC approved for APIDS Standard 1 (automated prohibited items detection software). For airport leaders, certification helps de-risk adoption by validating algorithm performance for operational deployment and supporting alignment with regulator expectations. Certification scope and scanner compatibility should be confirmed during evaluation for your specific environment.

IOAO is a perfect fit for airports that would like to increase terminal capacity without investing in new terminals, airports that would like to reduce the wait time of passengers in queues, and airports that would like to operate with fewer security officers, or utilize them to other assignments than screening.
IOAO tends to deliver the most operational value when passenger volume is high, and space or staffing makes it hard to add lanes. It is also a strong fit for airports that experience sharp peak periods (banked departures, seasonal surges) where queues form quickly, and for multi-terminal operations looking for a scalable, standardized approach across checkpoints.