Quantitative image analysis of food microstructure

In this chapter, we highlight some of the common pitfalls in the use of image analysis. We show a few examples of how image analysis can be successfully used, possibly in conjunction with sensory analysis and visual observation, to discover interesting properties about food products. Special attention is granted to segmentation, a ubiquitous image processing step, propaedeutic to most quantitative analysis methods. In fact, this is the most critical step of all the image analysis chain and is potentially disastrous for the quality of subsequent analyses. Unfortunately, this step is the one which people tend to run more carelessly. We discuss the need to carefully choose segmentation algorithms as well as to thoroughly analyse the outcome, before any quantitative analysis is made. Finally, a few good practices are discussed.