ARS | Publication request: Quality Inspection of Poultry Carcasses

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: July 18, 2007
Publication Date: February 1, 2008
Citation: Park, B. Quality Inspection of Poultry Carcasses. Chapter 7, Computer Vision Technology for Food Quality Evaluation (ed. Da-Wen Sun), Elsevier Press: 157-187, 2008.

Interpretive Summary: Interpretive Summary The high-speed inspection to ensure the safe and quality production of poultry during post-harvest processing has become an important issue, as the public is demanding assurance of better and safer food. Machine vision techniques are useful for the agricultural and food industries, particularly in grading and inspection. A machine vision is the technology that provides automated production processes with vision capabilities, which is particularly useful when the majority of inspection tasks are highly repetitive and extremely boring, and their effectiveness depends on the efficiency of the human inspectors. The development of accurate and reliable instruments for on-line detection of unwholesome carcasses such as cadaver, septicemic, bruised, tumorous, airsacculitic, and ascetic is essential to improve the poultry quality inspection.

Technical Abstract: Technical Abstract A machine vision is feasible for grading poultry production as well as for identifying parts of poultry carcasses at the processing line. Several different machine vision systems including color, multi-, and hyper-spectral imaging, have been developed and tested for poultry quality and safety inspection. For high-speed quality and safety inspection, machine vision is a solution; however, it requires advanced sensing capabilities for the complexity of poultry carcasses. A multispectral imaging system is able to identify normal, bruised, tumorous, and skin-torn carcasses. Along with selective image processing and analysis software, a multispectral imaging system can be effectively implemented for real-time, online poultry processing. A hyperspectral imaging is also an extremely useful tool to analyze thoroughly the spectra of the surface of poultry carcasses. A hyperspectral imaging system with image processing algorithms could be effectively used for the detection of contaminants on the surface of broiler carcasses.