Spectral Imaging as a Tool in Food Research and Quality Monitoring of Food Production

Abstract

A forward-looking food industry must obviously continue to develop its production technology to be able to produce foods that meet both present legislation and consumers’ expectations and demands. Ensuring a healthy, secure and sensory food quality, as well as ensuring cost competitiveness / effectiveness is of high importance to survive the strong competition within the field. The high costs in many food-processing areas are primary caused by the extensive use of manual work e.g. for visual inspection of quality parameters and the subsequent sorting or removal of products. However, new production and / or distribution technologies in themselves neither create nor ensure high quality of products or the optimization of the production. This requires knowledge about both new opportunities to create specific production and distribution conditions in combination with knowledge about product response given the production and distribution conditions. Food and food production covers a broad variety of both raw materials and production processes. Therefore, application of new technology cannot be regarded as a simple procurement of accessible standard products but requires research and development including several tests to ensure optimal outcome. The assessment of the visual appearance of food products from size and colour of the product to uniformity of packaging is an important part of the control system in the food supply chain. To ensure that the required standards are met, inspections at all stages from primary production to final retail distribution are needed. However, visual inspection of quality parameters and the subsequent sorting and sometimes also rejection of products by manual work are significant contributors to the total production costs in the food industry. To save costs and to enhance visual quality assessments, automatic vision systems are introduced and tested in many food-manufacturing operations. Vision systems are attractive for online quality assessment and process control, because the methods are rapid, contact free and non-destructive. The introduction of vision systems for quality monitoring in the food manufacturing industry is challenged by the relatively harsh production environment, typically in the form of a high humidity, low / high temperatures, routine wash down and sanitation. The technology is maturing, however, and the special hardware requirements on system design are now met, so that computer-based vision systems are now gaining wider application for quality monitoring in food processing.