Image Analysis of Food Microstructure

A guide to the common procedures and techniques by which quantitative microstructural information about food is obtained from images. It familiarizes the food scientist with the image processing and measurement tools used to characterize a variety of microstructures in foods.

Image Analysis of Food Microstructure offers a condensed guide to the most common procedures and techniques by which quantitative microstructural information about food can be obtained from images. The images are selected from a broad range of food items, including macroscopic images of meat and finished products such as pizza, and the microstructures of cheeses, dough and baked goods, ice cream, fruits and vegetables, emulsions, foams, and gels.

The book informs food scientists about the image processing and measurement tools used to characterize a variety of microstructures in foods, using high-quality image techniques to illustrate chemical composition, thermo-mechanical processing, and genetic and structural properties. These different types of images used to measure various aspects of structure include: macroscopic light photography, confocal light microscopy, electron microscopy, atomic force microscope images, magnetic resonance, and computed tomography. Then the text explains how to interpret images to produce data, plot the results in different graphs, and identify trends. Examples using these image analysis techniques show typical results that researchers can expect and recreate.

Image Analysis of Food Microstructure summarizes the basic procedures that can be useful in various aspects of food research, from nutraceuticals to cooking and food processing. It presents the processing of images and mathematical principles needed for image analyses in a step-by-step approach to extract key information from the images obtained.