Portable Multispectral Imaging Instrument for Food Industry*

The overall goal of this paper is to develop a cost effective portable multispectral imaging instrument that inspectors or plant personnel can use for quality control. Food safety and quality in food industry, especially small plant is ongoing problem. Identification and separation of contaminated food is very important to protect the consumer from a potential source of food poisoning. The current methods of inspecting food quality and safety, however, is mostly done by human visual observation with the criteria of color, consistency, and composition used for identification. Therefore, there is a need to develop instrumental methods which can reduce inspector fatigue, variability, insure continuous inspection, and provide a safe and high quality food supply for the consumer. The development of a portable multispectral instrument for contaminant detection is able to improve food safety and quality inspection in identifying, developing, and validating imaging technologies that are economically viable, especially for small food processing plants to help them meet food safety requirements. As an example of multispectral imaging application, we designed and fabricated a portable multispectral instrument to collect and analyze spectra for real-time contaminant detection for small poultry processing plant. Specifically, the procedure to develop a portable multispectral instrument including sensor design, fabrication, calibration, data collection, analysis, algorithm development for detecting poultry fecal contaminants in real-time was demonstrated.