Line-scan hyperspectral imaging for real-time in-line poultry fecal detection

Abstract

The ARS multispectral imaging system with three-band common aperture camera was able to inspect fecal contaminants in real-time mode during poultry pro- cessing. Recent study has demonstrated several image processing methods including binning, cuticle removal filter, median filter, and morphological analysis in real-time mode could remove most false positive errors. The ARS research groups (Beltsville, MD and Athens, GA) and their industry partner are now merging the fecal detection and systemically disease detection systems onto a common platform using a line-scan hyperspectral imaging system. This system will aid in commercialization by creating one hyperspectral imaging system with user-defined wavelengths that can be installed at different locations of the processing line to solve significant food safety prob- lems of disease as well as contaminant detection. Thus, this research demonstrated the feasibility of line-scan hyper- spectral imaging system in terms of processing speed and detection accuracy for a real-time, in-line fecal detection at current processing speed (at least 140 birds per min) of commercial poultry plant. Our preliminary results showed the real-time hyperspectral imaging system could detect small amount (about 10 mg) of fecal (duodenum, cecum, colon) and ingesta contaminants. The system performance could be improved by optimizing line lighting system especially near-infrared bands for quality images and additional spectral images to minimize false positive detection errors. The newly developed line-scan hyper- spectral imaging system could improve Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS)'s poultry safety inspection pro- gram significantly.