Hyperspectral Imaging Technology: A Non-Destructive Tool for Food Quality and Safety Evaluation and Inspection

By combining two mature technologies of imaging and spectroscopy, hyperspectral imaging has recently been widely studied and developed, resulting in many successful applications in the food industry for quality and safety evaluation and inspection. These applications include meat quality assessment, automated poultry carcass inspection, quality evaluation of fish, bruise detection of apples, quality analysis and grading of citrus fruits, bruise detection of strawberry, visualization of sugar distribution of melons, measuring ripening of tomatoes, defect detection of pickling cucumber, and classification of wheat kernels. In this review paper, the principle of the technique is introduced, followed by detailed discussion on some typical application examples to illustrate the advantages of applying the technique in the food industry.