FORT JACKSON: An eerie image of a magenta, blue-green and yellow face glows on a screen as a government employee steps behind a heat-sensing camera on this sprawling U.S. Army base. Not far away, researchers are studying the ability of lasers to detect muscle contraction. Other technology tracks the movement of a person's eyes.

Liars beware. The U.S. Defence Department facility that trains the people who run the government's polygraph machines is looking to an even higher plane of technology in its quest for separating fact from fiction.

"We don't know how far down the road it's going to be, but this is showing some potential," Bill Norris, director of the Defence Academy for Credibility Assessment, said recently as he talked about the thermal-imaging device that measured the temperature of his face. Besides serving as a hub of high-tech research into futuristic methods of lie detection, the academy is responsible for training all polygraph examiners who work for the U.S. military and 23 federal agencies.

Polygraph examiners monitor subjects' blood pressure, respiration rates and sweat gland activity as part of a standardised — and potentially hours-long — interview process.

Part of the job uses the base's young soldiers to role-play stealing money from a fake bank. Some go through with it; some do not. The academy's trainees wire the soldiers to sensors and quiz them about their acts during videotaped exercises, with the details of their heartbeats and other physical reactions displayed on wide-screen monitors.

Meanwhile, researchers are testing other devices that would allow lie detection to go wireless.

There is the thermal imaging technology that Mr. Norris says is promising given its ability to tie deception to temperature changes in the skin. Another studies the pattern of an individual's gaze to see how the eye looks at a familiar or unfamiliar scene. — AP

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