OH OH OH another possibility!
Has everyone heard of the teleportaion experiments where they can transfer the properties of one photon to another across a distance through 'entangling' the photons, separating them and then exiting the first with a laser beam which in turn affects the second photon in the same manner but at a remote location?
Maybe Troy's device entangles the visible photons with the penetrating EM sprectrum photons and the visible range then are recieving through this entanglement, information from those which have penetrated the barrier.