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Q for the author: how valuable would an actual proprietary airport X-ray be, in terms of designing devices (as compared to another X-ray of similar spec)? Does having access to the actual X-ray for purposes of product testing really make that much of a difference to a technically gifted bomb-maker?

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Yes. See my comment below to djmdjm, but also, I'll add one more thing. Take a knife out of your kitchen drawer and hold it in your hand in front of you such that the sharp side of the blade is on the left and the dull side is on the right. Easy to see. Now rotate it 90 degrees such that the sharp side is facing you and the dull side is facing away. Much harder to see, especially if you can imagine what it would look like on an x-ray, and how you could further conceal it by carefully placing other items between the "camera" and the item.

Angle-shifting units make this harder, but the obvious blindspot is the conveyor belt entrance/exit holes (they cannot have imaging equipment in them).

Exactly. Imaging devices all have blind spots, which is how I was able to defeat the TSA's body scanners in 2012.

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