Recent developments in the applications of image processing techniques for food quality evaluation

Image processing techniques have been applied increasingly for food quality evaluation in recent years. This paper reviews recent advances in image processing techniques for food quality evaluation, which include charge coupled device camera, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, and electrical tomography for image acquisition; pixel and local pre-processing approaches for image pre-processing; thresholding-based, gradient-based, region-based, and classification-based methods for image segmentation; size, shape, colour, and texture features for object measurement; and statistical, fuzzy logic, and neural network methods for classification. The promise of image processing techniques for food quality evaluation is demonstrated, and some issues which need to be resolved or investigated further to expedite the application of image processing technologies for food quality evaluation are also discussed. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.