ABSTRACT
The history of digital imaging dates to the 1920s with applications in the newspaper industry when pictures were sent through submarine cable. However, the basis for the modern computer dates to the 1940s with the introduction of two concepts: memory to hold a stored program and conditional branching, which are the basic foundations of the central processing unit. The first computers capable of image processing originated in the 1960s and the image processing field began to grow steadily. The application of X-ray imaging in medicine started in the 1950s, and invention of computerized axial tomography (CAT) or computerized tomography (CT) in the 1970s is the most crucial event in medical applications of digital image processing (Gonzalez and Woods, 2002). The original applications of image processing were in space programs and medicine, but later the applications of image processing began to grow widely. In the last couple of decades, many research and development works have been conducted related to image processing applications in the food and agriculture industry. A wide variety of imaging applications have replaced traditional methods for food quality monitoring, classification and grading of food materials, and evaluating the processing methodologies in the agri-food sector. Image processing is a wide subject area and many techniques that depend on the subject material and the requirement of the application are involved. This chapter deals with image acquisition and processing techniques adopted in the food and agriculture industry, and examples of imaging techniques adopted with various food materials will be presented.
