SPECTRAFISH

Hyperspectral imaging technology for the quality inspection of fish products

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The EU finfish industry should deliver high quality and safe products to the marketplace to meet the expectation of consumers. Appearance, nutrition, texture, freshness, and spoilage are the most important quality and safety attributes of fish products. Quality inspection of fish is typically carried out manually on candling tables by human visual detection, which is very labour intensive, and many quality and safety attributes are invisible to the inspectors. It is also subjective and dependent on the experience and criteria of the inspectors. Available traditional instrumental measurements are destructive, expensive, time-consuming and inefficient. Moreover, they cannot provide spatial distribution information of desired attributes, critical for evaluating the quality and safety of fish products. In this project, hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology will be applied for quantitative and non-invasive measurement and visualisation of quality and safety of finfish fillets. Combining the main advantages of spectroscopy and computer vision, HSI can simultaneously acquire spectral and spatial information in one single system, enabling it to measure both external physical and morphological characteristics and internal quality attributes from a finfish product. A reliable HSI system with numerous quantitative models will be trained, established, and validated for rapid and non-invasive measurement of quality and safety attributes of finfish fillets based on the most critical image features extracted from visible and invisible (near infrared) hyperspectral images of finfish fillets and their reference attribute values, which will be measured by using traditional instruments and sensory analysis. This development brings a major advance to the EU finfish industry for ensuring the safe processing of finfish products and the correct labelling of products in relation to quality, safety, authenticity and compliance.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

An effective and non-invasive inspection system for finfish products is being developed by an EU-funded consortium made up of small and medium-sized enterprises and research centres. The system represents a significant step forward for Europe's finfish industry and consumers, with increased confidence in the quality and safety of this nutritious product.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Appearance, nutrition, texture, freshness and spoilage are the most important indicators of quality and safety in fish products. Traditionally, quality inspection has been based on visual inspection. However, this method is labour intensive and is dependent on the experience and criteria of the inspectors. In addition, many attributes affecting quality and safety are invisible to the human eye.

Current instrumental measurements are unsuitable as they are expensive and time consuming and result in the destruction of the sample. They are also unable to provide spatial distribution information for those critical attributes used to evaluate the quality and food safety. Therefore, there is a need for a cost-effective, rapid, reliable and non-invasive method for measuring quality control in fish products.

This challenge is being taken up by the 'Hyperspectral imaging technology for the quality inspection of fish products' (http://www.spectrafish.eu (SPECTRAFISH)) project. The consortium is developing an inspection technique based on hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technology, which integrates conventional computer vision and spectroscopy technology to create unique imaging sensors. The HSI approach provides both spatial information and information relating to each pixel in an image, thereby revealing 'what is where'.

Project partners are currently developing a laboratory test rig to train and validate quantitative models for measuring the quality and safety attributes of finfish fillets. The next stage will be to build an HSI prototype system that will be tested in industry for the rapid, non-invasive and simultaneous measurement of a series of safety and quality attributes.

The novel technology developed by SPECTRAFISH will enable end users to conduct automated inspection of fish fillets, which can be operated online. This will enable manufacturers to ensure their fish products are safe, nutritious and of high quality.

SPECTRAFISH will also improve the competitiveness of the European fish sector by automating the inspection process, saving processing time and reducing spoilage.