“The closest analogy that you could think of in your daily life is the MRI scan in a hospital, where you basically have radio waves going into you as the object, and the radio waves that come back help to form the image of that scan. We do something similar,” Cutmore said.

But the team was only halfway there.

Princess Diana visited a minefield in Huambo, in Angola. Credit: AP

TNT, the most common explosive used in landmines, was successfully identified in laboratory testing in Australia last month — a major breakthrough.

The team hopes the lab results will translate to reality.

Dual explosive mine detector in development

Edwards said: “As I said, no silver bullet, but definitely a breakthrough. It is exciting. Absolutely. And as an Australian, I’ve got to say, it is quite nice to have this Australian contribution being made across the world, and I’d love to see them in Ukraine.”