MINNEAPOLIS – Revealing images have given way to Gumby-like outlines for airport passengers subjected to electronic body scans at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

MSP has joined a growing list of airports using new equipment that displays a generic figure instead of an optical X-ray-type image of an individual’s features.

The Transportation Security Administration spent a year working the bugs out of the new system, which was shown off to media Thursday.

The generic approach is a response to complaints that the sharper images violated passenger privacy.

The new system has the added advantage of speeding up checkpoint lines because it eliminates the need for security officers to review images from locations where they can’t see the passenger.

“It’s probably a 12- to 15-second process,” said Joe Taney, deputy federal security director for the TSA in Minnesota. “In the past it might have been 20 to 30 seconds. When you start piling up 10,000 people a day, it adds up.”

As with the old system, passengers can decline to be scanned by the new equipment. But they will then receive a more intrusive pat-down.

The latest generation of airport security scanners relies on software called Automated Target Recognition that pinpoints suspicious items on unidentifiable human forms.

The new system uses the same outline to depict every passenger scanned, regardless of their size or weight. A yellow box on the image locates potential threats under a passenger’s clothes that will require additional screening.

If the software detects nothing unusual, a green “OK” appears on the monitor. Passengers can view the same image the TSA officer sees.