The measures will replace mandatory enhanced screening of all passengers travelling to the US from 14 mostly Muslim nations, put into place following a failed al-Qa'ida attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day.

"It's much more tailored to what intelligence is telling us and what the threat is telling us, as opposed to stopping all individuals from a particular nationality," an unnamed US official told The Washington Post.

The announcement, to be made by the Department of Homeland Security, comes after a three-month review of security protocols.

"It is much more surgically targeting those individuals we are concerned about and have intelligence for," a senior official told The New York Times.

The current "no-fly" list is to remain in place under the new procedures, but will be supplemented by cross-referenced information that may result in passengers being subject to further screening even if their names were not flagged, The Wall Street Journal said.

Characteristics such as nationality, age, recently visited countries and partial names will be used alongside the "no-fly" list.

The move aims to avoid the intelligence failures that allowed the alleged Christmas Day bomber, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to board the Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam wearing underpants rigged with explosives, even though US intelligence had been alerted to information on him.