Food Safety Inspection and Control Using Hyperspectral Imaging

Abstract

Food safety is an important public concern, and outbreaks of food-borne illnesses can lead to disturbance to the society. Consequently, fast and non-destructive methods are required for sensing the safety situation of produce food. As an emerging technology, hyperspectral imaging has been successfully employed in food safety inspection and control. Additionally, other studies, including detecting meat and meat bone in foodstuffs as well as organic residue on food processing equipment are also reported due to their close relationship with food safety control. Hyperspectral imaging, like other spectral imaging, collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum. The goal of hyperspectral imaging is to obtain the spectrum for each pixel in the image of a scene, with the purpose of finding different objects, identifying materials, or detecting processes.With these applications, it can be demonstrated that miscellaneous hyperspectral imaging techniques including near-infrared hyperspectral imaging, fluorescence hyperspectral imaging, etc., or their combinations are powerful tools for food safety surveillance.