ABSTRACT
Assessment or evaluation of food products is essential for ensuring their quality and safety. Rising consumer awareness and expectation for high quality along with strict legislation for food safety has necessitated quality evaluation of every food product being manufactured or processed. Consequently, the development and/or identification of advanced, reliable, fast, and cost-effective forms of non destructive sensors and/or sensing techniques are in high demand. Computer vi sion is a powerful technique to extract and quantify features for food quality assessment and control. It offers the advantages of accurate quantification of im ages and rapid data handling. Computer vision has been a proven technology for a variety of nondestructive methods to evaluate food product characteristics rang ing from dimensional measurements (length, width, shape, other geometrical at tributes) to texture, color, defects and diseases, to three-dimensional analysis of food quality. With rapid advances in electronic hardware and other associated computer imaging technologies, the cost-effectiveness of computer vision sys tems has greatly improved. It is estimated that by the year 2000, sales of machine vision systems in the North American food sector will be approximately $148 million (1).
