Two-wave-band color-mixing binoculars for the detection of wholesome and unwholesome chicken carcasses: a simulation

Application of optical technologies in the US poultry slaughter facilities for the detection of poultry carcase condemnation

1. This article reviews the studies on optical technologies for automated poultry carcase inspection, discusses challenges and potential solutions in their real-time applications in poultry slaughter facilities. 2. Over the past few decades, extensive research has been underway to develop an optical technology-based machine vision system for automated inspection of poultry carcases and viscera. Such an automated technology will not only aid in carcase inspection to maximise food safety, but it will also support the U.S. New Poultry Inspection System's aim to foster innovation in poultry processing as well as increase line speed. 3. Many earlier studies based on visible and near-infrared spectroscopy showed promise, but could not be implemented successfully in an on-line poultry processing plant. Currently, multi- and hyper-spectral imaging-based machine vision systems have shown promising outcomes. 5. The critical hurdles for real-time application of automated imaging technology in poultry carcase inspection include high-speed processing lines, slaughter facilities environment and variation in broiler rearing practices. Therefore, further improvement in imaging and machine vision technologies based on physiochemical properties on poultry carcases, the establishment of more technology friendly inspection station, and an integrated data management for different rearing practices are essential to overcome those hurdles.

Three-color mixing for classifying agricultural products for safety and quality

A three-color mixing application for food safety inspection is presented. It is shown that the chromaticness of the visual signal resulting from the three-color mixing achieved through our device is directly related to the three-band ratio of light intensity at three selected wavebands. An optical visual device using three-color mixing to implement the three-band ratio criterion is presented. Inspection through human vision assisted by an optical device that implements the three-band ratio criterion would offer flexibility and significant cost savings as compared to inspection with a multispectral machine vision system that implements the same criterion. Example applications of this optical three-color mixing technique are given for the inspection of chicken carcasses with various diseases and for apples with fecal contamination. With proper selection of the three narrow wavebands, discrimination by chromaticness that has a direct relation with the three-band ratio can work very well. In particular, compared with the previously presented two-color mixing application, the conditions of chicken carcasses were more easily identified using the three-color mixing application. The novel three-color mixing technique for visual inspection can be implemented on visual devices for a variety of applications, ranging from target detection to food safety inspection.