Replace the emitter and reciever (Score 1)

How about replacing the the LED emitters with actual laser diodes and replacing the IR recievers with ones that will detect the laser beam. There is one problem with this, the beam will probably now be too narrow. The only thing I can think of is to replace the sensors with ones that have a much larger surface area or install a lens that will refract the beam into the sensor. Im not really familiar with the hardware so I dont know how big the sensors are to begin with.