Manufacturers are set to benefit from a calibrated image system, which can be used to photograph specific areas of interest on a product.
“We’ve calibrated a camera and printer to produce prints that are the correct colour, which is useful for production trials and can also be used in quality control,” said Campden and Chorleywood Research Association’s cereals and milling science manager Martin Whitworth.
“If you just get a standard digital camera and take a photo, the result can be variable depending on the light conditions and different printers. There’s no guarantee that the resulting product will be the right colour.”
CCFRA’s software will detect and analyse coloured features and measure colour changes along defined scales. Colour scales will be defined for individual food applications, traceable to colorimeter measurements and digital images, and based on commercially-available printed swatches.
At the moment, people can use colorimeters, which give an average colour measurement over a set circular region, but with the new imaging system, it is possible to home in on specific areas, explained Whitworth. “For example, with a cherry cake, you could measure just the cake without the cherries,” he said.
“We’ve also used it to look at various types of fish, such as a project CCFRA principal research officer Craig Leadley is working on, which looks at the effect of high pressure processing on seafood.
Whitworth claimed that the system could also be used to produce product pictures, which could be displayed around the factory to show staff what to look for.