Recognizing marbling in dry-cured Iberian ham by multiscale analysis

Abstract

Dry-cured Iberian ham is one of the most valuable meat products in Spain, with a first-rate consumer acceptance. Visually discernible characteristics of fat and lean, such as marbling, have an effect on the acceptability and palatability of ripened Iberian ham pieces. Important marbling properties include the amount and spatial distribution of intramuscular fat streaks. Chemical processing is the only proved way to determine the fat level of pig meat, but this technique is tedious, destroying and unable to offer information about fat distribution. The determination of Iberian ham sensorial quality has traditionally involved appraisal of marbling characteristics by descriptive analysis methods, which rely heavily on visual evaluation and testing by panels of trained graders. We present a novel method to recognize marbling in Iberian ham images to provide the base for the design of an automatic, non-destroying expert computer system, based on computer vision and pattern recognition techniques, which shall allow food technology industries to evaluate and characterize Iberian ham independently of the subjective and variable criteria of human testers.