JFS Special Issue: 75 Years of Advancing Food Science,

and Preparing for the Next 75

Image Analysis of Foods
John C. Russ

Abstract: The structure of foods, both natural and processed ones, is controlled by many variables ranging from biology
to chemistry and mechanical forces. The structure also controls many of the properties of the food, including consumer
acceptance, taste, mouthfeel, appearance, and so on, and nutrition. Imaging provides an important tool for measuring
the structure of foods. This includes 2-dimensional (2D) images of surfaces and sections, for example, viewed in a
microscope, as well as 3-dimensional (3D) images of internal structure as may be produced by confocal microscopy,
or computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. The use of images also guides robotics for harvesting and
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sorting. Processing of images may be needed to calibrate colors, reduce noise, enhance detail, and delineate structure
Materials Science

and dimensions. Measurement of structural information such as volume fraction and internal surface areas, as well as the
analysis of object size, location, and shape in both 2- and 3-dimensional images is illustrated and described, with primary
references and examples from a wide range of applications.

Keywords: image processing, image analysis, stereology

Introduction
Imaging serves many purposes in the food industry, requiring
rather different combinations of hardware and software. But the
underlying principles of digital capture, processing, and measure-
ment are involved throughout, and are described and illustrated
here using examples from a variety of food-related applications.
Typical situations include monitoring of production processes, in-
cluding robotic harvesting; the screening of fruits, vegetables, and
meats for quality assessment and control; grading of foods, both
natural and processed, to correlate with human tasting and sensory
panels and to provide greater consistency; and studies of structure–
property relationships, to better understand and control the effects
of processing and aging, and more. These functions have long
been performed based on visual analysis of images, and over the
past few decades have increasingly been shifted to computers as
the development of hardware and algorithms has proceeded.
Many of the specific applications, and the published papers
describing them, are overly specific to the food industry. However,
many of the same problems, and their practical solutions, exist
in other fields and can be readily adapted to solve food-related
imaging challenges. It is important to understand that essentially
the same algorithms for image processing and measurement are
used in a broad variety of fields from forensic science and materials
research to surveying and astronomy, and apply at scales that range
from nanometers to light years (Russ 2011). Furthermore, many
of the structure–property relationships in foods are very similar to
those found in inorganic materials.
The basic methods used to capture and digitize images that
are used for foods—both raw materials or finished products—
include macroscopic use of visible and near-visible (IR and UV)
light, for instance, with digital cameras and flatbed desktop scan-
ners. X-ray images are also useful for some purposes. At the mi-
MS 20150871 Submitted 5/22/2015, Accepted 7/2/2015. Author Russ is with called “lossless” mode of JPEG compression compromises the data,
Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, especially the color information. It is important to use file formats
NC, U.S.A. Direct inquiries to author Russ (E-mail: jruss@ncsu.edu).
croscopic level, light and electron microscopes can produce im-
ages of surfaces and also of internal structure, the later requiring
some sample preparation. Three-dimensional (3D) imagery, using
computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging, or serial
sections imaged, for example, with a confocal light microscope,
are becoming more common. In all cases, the images are stored in
computer memory as an array of numbers that represent various
properties such as density, color, surface elevation, and so on, and
these are subsequently viewed, processed, and measured.
One important consideration is the precision of the data. Com-
mon consumer grade cameras typically record photographs with
one part in 256 (8-bit) precision, which is generally adequate to
the purposes for which the cameras are used. For controlled or
constrained situations such as monitoring products on a conveyor
or a robotic fruit picker in the field, this is usually sufficient. But
for many applications, such as determining density from an X-ray,
or measuring the surface roughness of a chocolate bar, or mea-
suring the color change in a chemical process, more precision is
often needed. Sixteen-bit storage, or for color images 16 bits in
each channel, exceeds the performance of most cameras (typically
about 12 bits, or about one part in 4000) but is recommended
because it fits the memory organization of computers. Even more
image depth is necessary for some surface elevation measurements,
such as those obtained with scanned probe instruments.
It is of the greatest importance to preserve the precision of the
acquired image. That means avoiding any lossy compression, such
as JPEG. The purpose of compression is to reduce the file size
for convenience or economy in storing and transmitting images.
This is fine for everyday photos of readily recognized scenes and
people because human experience needs only a few clues to fill in
the rest of the information. But the discarded information is often
critical for scientific and technical purposes: accurate brightness
and color values, the location and even the existence of edges
and boundaries that define size and shape, and so on. Even the so-
such as TIF and RAW that preserve all of the original image

C 2015 Institute of Food Technologists

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Further reproduction without permission is prohibited
Image analysis of foods . . .

contents. Investing in a high-quality camera and then throwing subject (Itooka and Sakamoto 1981). This compensates for any
away much of the quality of the results makes no sense. changes in illumination or camera performance, so that correcting
the colors of the standards also adjusts the colors for the subject of
Image Processing interest and provides visual color matching, but it does not make
Computer processing of images can address several goals, such as the camera into a spectrophotometer. Digital color cameras record
improving their visual appearance, or preparing them to facilitate wide ranges of wavelengths in the individual filtered sensors and
subsequent measurements. The goal in the latter case is to represent cannot be used to measure color spectra.
the objects and structure so that meaningful measurements can be When using a flatbed scanner or a microscope, it is possible to
obtained to correlate with processing or natural history, and so on, achieve uniform illumination across the specimen, so that an object
and with criteria for acceptance, performance, or consistency of of interest will have the same appearance wherever it may happen
the product. to lie. That can be important for delineating the structures and
The first part of processing addresses problems associated with objects for subsequent recognition, counting, and measurement. In
the recording of the image. “Noise” is the part of the digitized many real-world situations, uniformity is difficult to achieve, or the
and stored signal that does not represent the actual scene, but specimen itself may be nonuniform in thickness or have a curved
arises in the acquisition process. Some of it is inherent in the surface. The preferred solution is to capture a “background” image

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statistics of photon capture and electron amplification, some arises of the scene without the objects of interest, which can then be

Materials Science
from external effects such as vibration, flickering lights, and so on. subtracted or divided (depending on whether the particular camera
Many types of noise can be reduced by capturing more signal (for in use responds logarithmically or linearly to brightness) to level
example, a brighter illumination or longer exposure) but this is the contrast. If adjustments have been performed on the image
often impractical. It is often assumed for convenience that noise to introduce or alter a nonlinear brightness scale, these should be
is a Gaussian random variable superimposed on the signal, but in reversed before the background removal.
most cases, it is not so simple and not simply additive. Removing samples from a copy stand and recording a back-
Most noise reduction algorithms combine each pixel with those ground image is straightforward, and the base is generally painted
in its local neighborhood in various ways. The median filter is a a uniform gray to facilitate the operation. But in some cases, this
good and simple way that has long been used to eliminate extreme method is not possible, and a background must be constructed
values while preserving the location of steps that represent the from other elements in the scene itself. For example, a mathe-
boundaries of structures and objects. For a gray scale image, it matical function may be fit to bright or dark background points
simply ranks the pixels in brightness order, finds the value in the throughout the image that are assumed to be the same, and this
center of the list, and replaces the original pixel value with that one. function subsequently removed to level the brightness of the entire
More complex methods such as a hybrid or conditional median scene including the objects. In the example in Figure 3, a different
(Astola and others 1989), a vector median for color images (Astola approach is used. By using a vector ranking procedure in color
and others 1990), anisotropic diffusion (Black and Sapiro 1998), space (Haralick and others 1987), to replace the red pixels by the
or non-local means (Buades and others 2005), are superior in their “least red” value from the local neighborhood, the blood vessels
ability to preserve or sharpen corners and edges and reduce noise, are removed producing a “background image.” Subtraction of this
but require more computation. These are rarely suited to on-line background then isolates the blood vessels of interest.
or real-time applications, but as computer power has increased, Other image processing operations that are sometimes required
now practical for desktop machines, taking no more than a few include the rectification of an image that is acquired with a non-
seconds for typical images. perpendicular view of the subject, to show the dimensions of
Figure 1 compares several methods. The median filter (per- interest. Closely related is the alignment of one image with another
formed in the example using a 7 pixel diameter circular to facilitate comparison or to detect small changes. These functions
neighborhood containing 37 pixels) reduces the local pixel-to- require the interpolation of pixel values to construct the derived
pixel noise variations but not the larger-scale mottled background. image.
Anisotropic diffusion is an extension of Gaussian smoothing
(which by itself blurs boundaries). The method applies weighted Image Enhancement
pixel averaging differently in the direction of the brightness gra- Another way to remove some forms of noise, or to enhance
dient and normal to that direction, to reduce but not eliminate the visibility of selected structures, especially steps in brightness
the effect of averaging on the blurring of edges. The non-local associated with the edges of structures and objects, is performed
means filter compares pixel patterns in different locations to form by transforming the image from the conventional array of pixels to
a weighted average combining values from similar arrangements the Fourier domain of frequencies, applying filters to the frequen-
that replaces each pixel in the original image. As is evident in cies, and then retransforming the image. Similar procedures can
the figure, this does the best job of noise reduction and re- be performed using the wavelet transform rather than the Fourier
tains or enhances edge sharpness, but it also requires the most transform, and there are very rapid software algorithms for both
computation. operations. These approaches to processing may be used to apply
In many instances, color in an image is important only to dis- low pass filters that blur images (and reduce noise), or high pass
tinguish one structure from another (for instance, the stained yeast filters that enhance edges (but can produce ringing around edges
in Figure 1). But in other cases, especially for quality control, the and increase noise). Both of these operations have very limited uses
color itself is important, and for this purpose, some calibration is in optimal image processing, but frequency space filters can be ef-
needed. Figure 2 shows the use of a color standard placed next fective for removing periodic noise such as electrical interference,
to the subject of interest. Measuring the red, green, and blue in- flickering of lights, or vibration.
tensities recorded by the camera in regions of known color allows Figure 4 shows an example of a different procedure which is also
the calculation of a tristimulus correction matrix that can be ap- performed in frequency space, to achieve contrast enhancement
plied throughout the image to adjust the visual appearance of the and the modification of the brightness values. The homomorphic

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 Image analysis of foods . . .
filter (Adelmann and Holger 1998) compresses the range of dark
values (the meat) and expands the contrast of the light fat so that
its spatial distribution can be measured to assess the marbling of
the steak.
Distinguishing structures or objects within an image so that they
can be measured (for instance to determine their number, location,
size, shape, and so on) can sometimes be accomplished because
they possess a unique color or brightness. In other cases, it requires
prior image processing. Figure 5 shows a microscope image of
cheese. The fat particles can be recognized visually because they
are “smooth” in appearance. However, they cannot be selected
simply by thresholding based on pixel value because they do not
have a unique brightness. There is no pixel brightness value within
the fat particles that is not also present in the surrounding gel
matrix. The image histogram shows a single, broad distribution of
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brightness values.
Materials Science
Creating a derived image in which each pixel is assigned a value
based on the local fractal dimension produces an image in which
the fat particles can be selected and measured. This is calculated
from the logarithmic variation of brightness with distance around
each pixel, out to a radius in the example of 7 pixels (Russ 1990).
The maximum difference in brightness increases more slowly in
the more uniform regions than in the highly textured matrix. Note
also that this calculation is insensitive to the side-to-side variation
of brightness visible in the original image.
Image Segmentation
Isolating features—structures or objects—for measurement is
often difficult and a wide variety of methods are implemented as
computer algorithms. In Figure 5, after processing the brightness
values of the fat particles are distinct and simple thresholding can
be used. This is a fast procedure based just on the histogram of
Figure 1–Noise reduction: (A) original image (microscope image of stained yeast); (B) median filter; (C) anisotropic diffusion; (D) non-local means.
Figure 2–Color correction: (A) original; (B) after correction based on the color standard included in the scene.
E1976 Journal of Food Science r Vol. 80, Nr. 9, 2015
the image, with several different algorithms in use for calculating
the optimum threshold value. The general approach is to find two
(or in some cases several) brightness ranges that have the greatest
distinction according to statistical criteria.
The most widely used method is based on the t-test, finding a
threshold that gives the maximum value of the Student’s t statis-
tic comparing the lighter and darker values (Otsu 1979; Trussell
1979). However, this test is parametric, based on the assumption
that the 2 groups are each characterized by normal (Gaussian) dis-
tributions. Few actual image histograms consist of two Gaussian
peaks, and sometimes do not have well defined or separate peaks at
all. Some other representative statistical approaches are presented
in Prewitt and Mendelsohn (1966), Weszka (1978), Yager (1979),
and Kittler and Illingworth (1986). Parker (1997) illustrates and
compares several of these methods and provides computer code for
the algorithms. A comprehensive survey of procedures for thresh-
olding based on histogram analysis can be found in Sezgin and
Sankur (2004). Generally, these methods were used when com-
puting power was limited, since only the image histogram was
required.
More advanced methods also take into account the values of
neighboring pixels, seeking to isolate regions that have an internal
consistency (Pal and Pal 1989; Chen and others 1994). For exam-
ple, the brightness thresholds may divide regions so that the max-
imum number of pixels have similar neighbors (that is, be within
uniform structural regions) and the minimum number have dissim-
ilar neighbors (that is, lie along boundaries between regions). The
gold standard procedure for accomplishing automatic segmenta-
tion is the k-means method (Hartigan 1975), which is iterative and
refines the assignment of pixels to groups until each grouping has
maximum internal uniformity. This works well in color images
or other multi-channel representations also, creating boundaries
Image analysis of foods . . .
between pixel values such that each of the k groups has the smallest
possible variation. It is possible, and often useful, to add derived
channels to an image which contain spatial derivatives, neigh-
bor differences, or other characteristics that can assist in defining
groups. Principal components analysis is useful for selecting the
most useful inputs.
Some approaches, such as active contours or “snakes” (Chan
and Vese 2001), ask a human to perform an initial approximate
delineation of the boundary and then refine it much like drawing
an elastic cord around the region (or a balloon in 3D) to minimize
the energy represented by its length and curvature. The technique
is very powerful, but not usually suited to automatic analysis.
Another human-driven approach is supervised learning in which a
human (tediously) labels sample images to classify pixels according
to structure, and statistical analysis of the data, again including
derived additional channel values, is used to define segmentation
criteria (Impoco and others 2011).
Some highly specific methods depend on independent knowl-
edge or assumptions about the features that are present. For exam-
ple, Figure 6 shows the use of a circular Hough transform (Ballard
1981) to locate the boundaries of fat droplets in unhomogenized
milk. Because of surface tension, it is expected that the boundaries
should appear circular, and this is approximately true for most of
them. The resulting distribution of circular diameters provides a
measurement of droplet sizes.
When features touch, it is often necessary to separate them
to obtain a meaningful measurement. Watershed segmentation
(Beucher and Lantejoul 1979) is generally the preferred method.
Figure 7 shows its use for isolating the pores (“cells”) in bread,
which have been measured and color coded according to the
ratio of maximum to minimum dimension (usually called the as-
pect ratio). This is also an example of 3D measurement, using
Figure 3–Removing background: (A) original image of an egg (courtesy Kathy Spencer, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif.); (B) after a color
vector operation that replaces red pixels; (C) subtraction of (B) from (A) isolates and enhances the visibility of the blood vessels.
Figure 4–Enhancement of detail: (A) steaks imaged on a flatbed scanner; (B) after application of a homomorphic filter.
computed tomography. That is particularly important for the anal-
ysis of irregular shapes and structures such as the bread, since no
2D section can be expected to reveal either the maximum or min-
imum dimension of the cells, or the connectivity of the matrix
around them.
Erosion and dilation are operations that remove or add pixels (or,
in 3 dimensions, voxels) according to local rules such as the number
or pattern of neighbors. These may be applied to monochrome
or color images, as for example the creation of Figure 3B. The
most common application is to binary or black-and-white images
that have been thresholded, for the purpose of filling small holes
and gaps, removing isolated pixel noise, and smoothing borders.
Specialized or conditional rules for erosion can also be used to
produce the skeleton, a set of lines along the centers of features that
capture the important topological characteristics of shape. There
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is also a more efficient and more accurate method for creating
Materials Science
the skeleton based on the same Euclidean distance map (Costa
2000) that is used to perform the watershed segmentation shown
above.
Figure 8 shows an example of a skeleton, the connected struts
that surround the pores in an open-cell foam. These struts lie along
triple lines where three pores are adjacent. Measurements of the
pore size (red) and strut length (green) characterize the complete
network of pores and struts.
Structural Measurements
There are two principle types of measurements performed on
images. One summarizes the entire structure represented, whereas
the other applies to specific objects within the image. Examples
of the 1st type are the volume fraction (for example, of cells in
bread or of fat in a steak) and the number of objects present. These
properties are fundamentally 3D in most cases, but can often be
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 Image analysis of foods . . .
measured from 2D images. The stereological procedures used are
generally very efficient, and in many cases can be reduced through
the use of appropriate grids of points or lines to counting the
number of “hits” the grid makes with the structure of interest.
These methods have the added benefit of providing an estimate
of the measurement precision. Figure 9 compares the volume
fraction (%) of voids in several aerated food products determined
using stereology, with that measured by volumetric reconstruction
of a 3D model using computed tomography.
The requirement is that the images be representative of the
entire structure. This means that usually many images are re-
quired in order to sample the entire specimen, and that they
should be distributed in such a way as to provide isotropic, uni-
form, and random sampling. That is not easily accomplished in
many situations, and special procedures and grids may be em-
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ployed to eliminate or compensate for bias in the results. There
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is a rich literature and active community of researchers using
and developing stereological methods, especially in the biological
sciences.
Some of the other global structural measurements that can be
made include the areas of various surfaces, the length of linear
structures including edges, the number of objects present, and
properties such as curvature and orientation. Figure 10 illustrates
the procedure for using a stereological grid to measure the total
Figure 6–Measuring fat droplets in milk: (A) original microscope image (courtesy Ken Baker); (B) superimposed circles using a Hough transform, color
coded by size; (C) distribution of circle diameters.
E1978 Journal of Food Science r Vol. 80, Nr. 9, 2015
surface area of pores in a foam. The outlines of the pores are
combined with a grid of lines, and the number of “hits” counted.
Knowing the length of lines in the grid allows calculating the
surface area per unit volume as 2 • Number of hits/grid line
length (in terms of the image magnification). The generation and
superposition of the grid, and the counting, can all be performed
automatically by image processing.
Determining the number of objects present in a specimen is
slightly more complicated because a planar section is more likely
to intersect large objects than small ones. Of course, it is possible
to perform a complete 3D reconstruction of the specimen and
then count, but there is a more efficient stereological procedure:
the disector (Sterio 1984). For this application, 2 images of section
planes a known distance apart are required. The distance between
the planes must be less than the smallest object of interest, so that
nothing can hide between them without intersecting one or the
other. The confocal light microscope, which can image optical
sections through structures, is well suited to this procedure.
Figure 11 shows an example. Two images recorded a short,
known distance apart in depth are automatically segmented to
isolate the fluorescing lipid particles. Image processing then de-
tects and removes features that are common to both images, even
if they have changed size or shape, or slightly shifted position.
The remaining intersections are counted, and the number of
Figure 5–Processing to isolate textures: (A) original
microscope image of cheese (courtesy Dr. E. A.
Foegeding, Dept. of Food Science, North Carolina State
Univ.); (B) histogram of (A) showing the number of pixels
with each brightness level and the cumulative plot (in
red); (C) result of calculating a local fractal dimension
around each pixel; (D) boundaries of the fat particles
(shown in red) determined using (C) and superimposed on
the original.
Image analysis of foods . . .

objects per unit volume is then calculated as one-half of the num-
ber of intersections divided by the volume between the image
planes (which is just the product of the image area and the sep-
aration distance). This procedure counts the tops and bottoms
of objects that lie within the volume between the two image
planes.
Measurement of density and especially of the variation of density
within structures is also performed. This may be done based on
the attenuation of transmission signals, including light, X-rays,
sound, and so on, or by full 3D reconstruction from CT, MRI,
or other means. Typical applications include pressed pills in the
pharmaceutical industry and rice kernels (Zhu and others 2012).
Measuring Individual Objects
When measuring or counting objects within a 2D or 3D image
that samples a larger specimen, it is important to deal correctly
with the boundaries of the image. For counting purposes, it is
correct to count features that intersect an edge as one-half, or to

Figure 7–Three-dimensional tomographic reconstruction of

bread (A) and the cells after separation by watershed
segmentation, color coded according to aspect ratio

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(courtesy Dr. Loes Brabant, Inside Matters, Aalst, Belgium).

Materials Science

Figure 8–Skeletonization: (A) network that surrounds the pores in an open-cell foam; (B) reconstructed skeleton showing the polygonal shape around
one pore; (C) the complete skeleton for the specimen; (D) histograms for the pore volumes (red) and strut lengths (green) (Dillard and others 2005).

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 Image analysis of foods . . .

count ones that intersect 2 or 3 sides (for 2D and 3D images,
respectively) and not count those that intersect the opposite sides.
Those objects would, potentially, be counted in adjoining fields
of view.
For measurement purposes, objects that intersect any image
boundary cannot be measured because the missing portions are
unknown. Large objects are more likely to intersect an edge than
small ones, so it is necessary to compensate in order to get a
correct estimate of the number and size distribution of the objects
(Baddeley 1999). This is most efficiently done by using an adjusted
count for each object that depends on its size relative to the size of
the image. In 3D, if the object’s projected dimensions in directions
parallel to the axes are Fx , Fy , Fz in an image of dimensions Wx ,
Wy , Wz , the adjusted count is
Wx · Wy · Wz
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are more likely to intersect the boundaries of the image and be
omitted from the counting and measuring process.
The measurements that can be made for individual objects break
down into 4 categories: size, position, brightness (or pixel values),
and shape. The first 3 of these are familiar concepts, although there
are a number of ways to define specific measures, and different
algorithms to perform the measurements. Shape is a somewhat
more elusive subject as discussed below.
Counting the pixels or voxels that comprise a discrete object
gives a measure of its area or volume, and it is common to ex-
press this as the diameter of the equivalent circle or sphere. Other
measures of size are the length (usually the longest dimension but
sometimes based on an ellipse or ellipsoid fit to the object, which
can be done in several different ways) and breadth (ideally the min-
imum caliper or external dimension, but often defined in other

ways for ease of measurement).

Count = (1)
Materials Science

(Wx − Fx ) · (Wy − F y ) · (Wz − Fz) The dimensions of the largest inscribed and smallest circum-
scribed circle (or sphere) are also used in some cases. In performing
For small objects, this is close to 1.0, but for increased object any of these measures, it is necessary to decide how to treat inter-
size, it is larger, compensating for the fact that similar large objects nal holes: should their area/volume and perimeter/surface area be

Figure 9–Measuring the void fraction in aerated

food products (Lim and Barigou 2004). The image
shows a CT reconstruction of an aerated chocolate
bar.

Figure 10–Stereological measurement of surface area: (A) image of a plane section through a foam (courtesy Dr. E. A. Foegeding, Dept. of Food Science,
North Carolina State Univ.); (B) outlines of the bubbles in the foam superimposed on a grid of lines; (C) enlarged example showing the “hits” that occur,
which may consist of either one or multiple connected pixels.

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Image analysis of foods . . .
ignored or included? The decision depends on the intended use
of the measurement, and the nature of the objects.
The perimeter or surface area is difficult to measure, especially
in 3D, and is problematic for objects with “rough” boundaries
that make the measurement dependent on the resolution of the
image. In 3D, the usual method for displaying a surface visually
(the so-called “marching cubes” algorithm, Lorensen and Cline
1987) does not generally produce a correct topological rendering
of the surface, and measurements based on it are flawed. There
is at present no algorithm that properly deals with 3D surfaces,
either for measurement or for connectivity.
Figure 12 shows a straightforward example of size measurement.
Rice grains are imaged using a desktop scanner. Separation of the
grains was accomplished by holding a vibrator against the scanner,
but for these convex objects, watershed segmentation can also be
used effectively to segment any touching objects. By leaving the
scanner lid open, the background around the grains is black and
the grains are readily thresholded. USDA defines the grading of
rice based on length, so the measurement performed is of the
longest dimension of each grain. A histogram of the grain lengths
determines the fraction of short grains, and shows that this is
long-grain rice.
Figure 13 shows a similar result for a microscope image of ice
crystals in a melted and refrozen ice cream. In this case, the outlines
of the crystals are dark, and some of the crystals are in contact.
After thresholding the outlines, image processing is used to fill the
interior of each outline (setting to black all pixels that do not have
a neighbor with a connected path to the borders of the image)
and then to segment the touching crystals. Finally, the area of each
crystal is measured, the crystals are counted using the adjusted
Figure 11–Counting number with the Disector: (A, B) two confocal light microscope images of parallel optical sections showing fluorescing lipid particles;
(c) the more than 200 intersections that are present in one plane and not the other (colors indicate which image is represented).
Figure 12–Measurement of rice: (A) original scanner image; (B) length measurements marked on each grain; (C) histogram of the distribution of length
values.
count shown above, and the size distribution is plotted based on
the equivalent circular diameter calculated from each area.
Most 2D size measurements have direct counterparts in 3D,
but the practical determination may be hampered by the coarser
resolution that is often available in tomographic reconstructions.
Particularly for structures with more complex shapes, finding the
longest and shortest dimensions, or estimating the surface area, is
time consuming and often uncertain. Figure 14 shows an example
from bread. The cells in bread are not simple spheres or ellipsoids,
and the shapes vary with size. Counting voxels within each cell
after segmentation, and expressing the size as the diameter of the
equivalent sphere, characterizes the size distribution of the cells.
The minimum thickness of the walls between the cells can be
determined using the medial axis transform, a very useful image
processing algorithm that assigns values to pixels or voxels within
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structures that measure the distance to the nearest external pixel
Materials Science
or voxel. This is also used to generate the skeleton, as the line
of maximum values in the transform. The smallest value of the
medial axis transform along the skeleton, or along each of its
segments, measures the minimum separation between objects, in
this case, the wall thickness between cells. The figure compares
several different breads. The graphs show that the size distribution
of the cells varies considerably but the wall thickness values do
not.
Pixel Values
The values assigned to pixels or voxels in an array may represent
the brightness of light captured by a camera (and for color images
there are generally three values, red, green, and blue). In other
cases, they may represent density, as in a CT reconstruction, or
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 Image analysis of foods . . .
elemental composition, as in an SEM X-ray map, or elevation, as
in a scanned probe image of a surface, or some other property of
the specimen. The interpretation of the data is often very appli-
cation specific. Some of the representations, such as density, are
nonlinear, and this information must be supplied based on ex-
ternal information and knowledge of the physics of the imaging
technique.
One of the more common situations is the use of digital color
cameras to monitor quality or consistency of products and pro-
cesses. An example of color measurements is tracking the process
of ripening. Arefi and others (2011), for example, uses the dif-
ferences (red minus green) and (red minus blue) to guide robotic
pickers to ripe tomatoes, ignoring unripe tomatoes, foliage, and
background. The use of differences (or in some applications, ratios)
reduces sensitivity to lighting and shadows.
E: Food Engineering &
For the application to monitoring of fruit ripening shown below,
Materials Science
and for most purposes when color values are important, the RGB
Figure 13–Measurement of ice crystals: (A) original microscope image; (B) processed and segmented image of crystals; (C) histogram of the distribution
of equivalent circular diameter.
Figure 14–Three-dimensional measurements of bread structures, as described in the text (Lassoued and others 2007).
E1982 Journal of Food Science r Vol. 80, Nr. 9, 2015
values stored from the camera are first converted to a different color
space representation. Figure 15 shows the RGB color coordinates,
which are a simple Cartesian cube, and the Lab color coordinates,
which separate the brightness (L or Luminance) information from
the color data. The L axis goes from black through grays to white
with no color. Departing from that axis introduces color, which,
depending on the L value, may be either dark or light. The 2 color
axes are a = red to green and b = yellow to blue.
The conversion from RGB to Lab is performed for each pixel or
voxel by linear calculations in the computer as needed. This is not
the only alternative useful color space. Hue-Saturation-Intensity
space also separates the color information from the brightness, and
corresponds more closely to how humans perceive and describe
color. Hue is the angle around the familiar color wheel, going
from red to orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, magenta, and back
to red. Notice that the color arrangement is different in HSI than
in Lab: green is not opposite red. Saturation is the amount of
Image analysis of foods . . .
color, for example, distinguishing pink from red. However, this
set of coordinates can be more complicated to work with because
of the discontinuity in angle values at red (from 359° to 0°) and
the variation in maximum saturation at dark and light ends of the
intensity scale.
Figure 16 shows an application using Lab coordinates. The
ripening of bananas is described in 7 stages based on human sen-
sory criteria. Pixel values from images of bananas are converted
from RGB to Lab coordinates, and the values used in a linear
regression procedure (described further below) to fit functions to
the L, a, and b values and to the contrast (cont: the difference
between the brightest and darkest L values) and the area fraction
of dark spots on the bananas (BSA, or black spot area). Plotted
against the function values, the stages in the process of ripening
are separated as shown in the figure.

valuei Xi
Xcentroid =  ; etc. (2)
valuei
When the object is defined simply as a binary set of pixels or
voxels, the values are all 1, but when brightness, density, or some
other value is present it must be taken into account. The resulting
centroid coordinates are not integers, but define positions with a
higher resolution than the pixel or voxel dimensions.
Other useful location measurements can be the center of the
minimum bounding circle (or sphere), or the center of the max-
imum inscribed circle (or sphere). The latter is defined as the
location of the maximum in the medial axis transform, and has
the virtue of always lying within the feature bounds, which the
other location measurements may not.
Locations may be interpreted as absolute coordinates, first

E: Food Engineering &

within the image itself and then related to an external system

Materials Science
Location such as the position within a larger structure (for example, the
The most commonly used location measurements for objects fruit on a tree or the bone in an animal). In some applications, the
define the position of the centroid. This is a moment calculation position of an animal in a field seen in an aerial photograph might
that sums the values of the pixels or voxels within the object times be converted to GPS coordinates to compare to a tracking unit on
the x, y, z coordinates to find the averages: a collar to identify a particular animal.

Figure 15–Red-Green-Blue, Lab and Hue-Saturation-Intensity color space coordinates.

Figure 16–Ripening of bananas. The axes of the

plot are functions fit by linear discriminant analysis,
separating the stages of banana ripeness defined
by sensory criteria (Mendoza and Aguilera 2004).

Vol. 80, Nr. 9, 2015 r Journal of Food Science E1983

 Image analysis of foods . . .
In other situations, it is useful to interpret locations relative
to other objects within the image (Schwarz and Exner 1983).
Figure 17 shows an example. The coordinates of the red-stained
lipid droplets in two custards are used to determine the nearest
neighbor distance for each droplet. This is useful for determining
whether the droplets are well dispersed or exhibit clustering, which
produces a slick or oily mouthfeel for the product. Statistically, for
a random or Poisson distribution of objects, the mean value of the
nearest neighbor distance is
 globule). Both of these types of measurements are used to measure
 Area
Mean Nearest N bor Distance = 0.5 ·
N objects.
When features are self-avoiding, such as cacti in the desert
E: Food Engineering &
(where each plant protects its access to water and nutrients by
Materials Science
suppressing the growth of competitors) or fat in well-marbled
beef, the measured mean nearest neighbor distance is greater than
that for a random case. Conversely, when clustering is present,
such as the tendency for people to live in cities, the measured
mean nearest neighbor distance is less than that for the random
case. In the example of Figure 17, the ratio of the measured mean
nearest neighbor distance to that for the random case based on
the number of droplets present is 1.005 for custard (a) and 0.765
for custard (b), providing a quantitative measure that confirms the
visual impression of the images.
In this example, the spatial relationship of one fat droplet
to another is determined. Similar procedures can be used in 3
dimensions, for example to compare the spatial distribution of
fats in tomographic reconstructions of different Italian sausages
(Frisullo and others 2009). Sometimes it is important to determine
the relationship between different structures or objects present.
Figure 18 shows a measurement of adjacency between fat globules
and casein micelles in milk.
After segmenting the fat globules (F) and casein micelles (C),
the outlines of each are obtained as separate images. These are
simply the pixels that are not surrounded on all sides by other
pixels belonging to the same object. These outlines are dilated—
expanded by one pixel in all directions—and then images are then
combined using a Boolean AND to keep just pixels that belong
to both images.
Figure 17–Measuring the spatial dispersion of red-stained fat in custard (images courtesy of Anke Jannsen, ATO B.V. Food Structure and Technology).
E1984 Journal of Food Science r Vol. 80, Nr. 9, 2015
The result is the portions of the outlines that are common to
both types of objects, which delineate the regions where they
touch. Measurement of the lengths of the common segments and
the lengths of the complete outlines gives a ratio that measures
the area fraction of the objects that are in contact (41% of the fat
surface is in contact with casein micelles). It is also possible to use
the outlines of one type of object—the fat globules in the example
shown in the figure—as markers to select the entire objects—the
casein micelles—that are in contact, so that they can be counted
and measured (52% of the casein micelles are in contact with a fat
(3) and describe the adjacency relationships between the classes of
Shape
As mentioned above, shape is not an easy property of objects to
define or to measure. Unlike size, for example, where words like
length, area, height, and so on have straightforward and generally
understood meaning, human languages have few words for shape
(for example, skinny, fat, bent, pointy) and most of them are at best
only qualitative and comparative. The one that is most often used
as an example of a shape descriptor is “round,” which compares a
shape to that of a circle. But there is more than one way to depart
from being “like a circle”—a shape may be stretched out into an
ellipse, or remain equiaxed but have an irregular border like the
petals on a daisy, or become angular like a polygon or star.
So a simple measurement such as 4π • Area/Perimeter2 , which
is 1.0 for a circle and becomes smaller for more irregular shapes,
does not adequately specify the nature of the irregularity. Nor does
it have a consistent name; the words “circularity” “roundness”
“formfactor” and others have been used for that calculated value,
but they are also used for others that are calculated differently. The
attraction of such dimensionless ratios based on size measurements
is that they are quick to calculate, but they have only limited
applicability. For the expression shown, the difficulty in accurately
measuring perimeter introduces additional problems in which the
shape measurement varies with size or resolution.
Dimensionless ratios are one kind of reductive shape measure-
ment that attempts to characterize a shape by a single number.
Another, which has the virtue of corresponding to one of the
Image analysis of foods . . .

elements of “shape” that humans recognize, is fractal dimension. Moments are also complete. The moments are computed as
This is a measure of the roughness or irregularity of the boundary. 
The fact that for many—but certainly not all—natural objects, the μm ,n = xi m y j n · vi, j (4)
irregularity happens to be self-similar regardless of magnification i, j
(Mandelbrot 1982), at least in a statistical sense, offers hope that it
and converted to normalized moments
has real meaning.
There are several ways to measure fractal dimension, the most μm ,n
ηm ,n =   (5)
efficient being from the histogram of the Euclidean distance map [m + n − 2]/2
that is also used to generate the medial axis transform (Russ 1994). μ0
The histogram measures the number of pixels or voxels as a func-
tion of their distance from the boundary, and its cumulative plot which fully describe the shape. Flusser and Suk (1993) derive a
gives the dimension. In 2D, the fractal dimension of a boundary set of invariant moments that remain constant with translation,
is greater than 1.0, the topological dimension of a line, and in 3D, rotation, and size. In many cases, a few of these can be selected by
it is greater than 2.0, the topological dimension of a surface. statistical procedures to effectively classify objects based on their
At the other extreme from fractal dimension, which is related shapes. For instance, Zion and others (1999) distinguish fish species
based on invariant moments, and Dogantekin and others (2008)

E: Food Engineering &

only to the boundary roughness, the skeleton of an object pro-

vides a handy measure of its topology. The number of end points,
branch nodes, and loops can distinguish many shapes, and mea-
surement of the lengths and angles of the branches may also
be useful for characterization. This is particularly important for
describing network structures and their connectivity, which is the
number of redundant paths through the network.
All of the preceding measures are reductive, seeking a few num-
bers, or even a single one, that can be useful for distinguishing
objects, correlating with other variables, and so on. There are also
complete descriptors that are capable of reconstructing the origi-
nal shape. The medial axis transform is one: generating circles in
2D or spheres in 3D at each point along the skeleton line, with a
radius given by the transform value, generates the original shape in
Materials Science
distinguish human parasite eggs using moments. Moments have
the advantage that they use all of the internal pixels or voxels in
an object, and so are less sensitive to the boundary in cases where
segmentation may be inexact.
Conversely, harmonics depend only on the boundary, and are
generally an efficient as well as complete shape descriptor. The
simplest way to visualize the process is to imagine the boundary
shape (in 2D) unrolled to produce a function ρ(ϕ) where ρ is the
radius and ϕ is the angle. Since this repeats every 2π, it is readily
expressed as a Fourier series:

ρ(ϕ) = A j · sin(2π · j ϕ − δ j ) (6)
j

all its detail. However, the medial axis transform itself is unwieldy where A is the amplitude of each successive frequency j and δ is
as a numerical descriptor. the phase.

Figure 18–TEM image of milk used to measure contact relationship between fat globules (F) and casein micelles (C) as described in the text (the arrow
marks a lighter fat crystal within the globule): (A) original image from Figure 7a in Aguilera and Stanley (1999), with permission; (B) outlines of the fat,
with red segments indicating contact with casein; (C) casein micelles color coded to distinguish those in contact with fat.

Vol. 80, Nr. 9, 2015 r Journal of Food Science E1985

 Image analysis of foods . . .
All of the terms in the series, both the amplitude and phase,
are needed to reconstruct the original shape, but in most instances
the amplitudes of higher frequencies drop rapidly and a small set
of terms can describe the shape with reasonable precision. Fur-
thermore, in many cases, statistical tests such as linear discriminant
analysis, or a neural net, can select just a few amplitude values
that provide classification or characterize shape variations. Several
authors (McLellan and Endler 1998; Bruno and others 2008; Neal
and Russ 2012) have used leaves as test shapes to show that with
only a few harmonic coefficients, species can be successfully dis-
tinguished. Most of the extensive literature showing the use of
harmonics has been directed to the analysis of inorganic parti-
cle shapes, but Lestrel’s books (1997, 2000) apply specifically to
biology and life sciences.
Since shapes may be reentrant, a Fourier or wavelet transform
E: Food Engineering &
of a list of the coordinates along the boundary provides a more
Materials Science
practical way to construct the series. In 3D, spherical harmonics
(Brechbühler and others 1995), and wavelets (Yu and others 2007)
can also be used to represent and to analyze shapes.
Analysis
Measurements of object size, location, and shape, pixel values
or properties derived from them, and structural parameters such
as volume fraction and connectivity, are used for purposes such as
correlation and classification. Correlation may be used to find a
variation in one property, such as shape or density, with another,
such as size. Or, it may be useful to correlate measured values
from the image with an external variable. The general subject of
Figure 19–Measurement of the thickness of ice crystals in fish at different
distances from the cooling surface (Mousavi and others 2007).
Figure 20–Distinguishing classes of nuts: (A) portion of a flatbed scanner image of the nuts; (B) plot of the measurements of length, form factor and
radius ratio; (C) plot of the derived canonical parameters that best separate the classes.
E1986 Journal of Food Science r Vol. 80, Nr. 9, 2015
statistical analysis of data goes well beyond the intended scope of
this article but a few examples may serve as indicators.
Figure 19 is an example of correlation, in which measurements
of the thickness of ice crystals that form in frozen fish are shown
as a function of distance from the cooling surface. As the distance
increases, the mean and standard deviation of the thickness of the
ice that forms increases. This is readily understandable based on the
freezing process and heat transfer rates, but a quantitative measure
can serve to guide practical freezing procedures to produce quality
frozen products.
Statistical tools are also available that use measured values for
classification. As in the case of the stages of banana ripening shown
above, this generally involves more than a single measured param-
eter. Techniques such as linear discriminant analysis and stepwise
regression are useful for determining the optimum minimum con-
figuration of parameters to address a specific application. Neural
nets are also used for this purpose.
Figure 20 shows an example, the classification of nuts based
on scanned images. As a training population, images of several
hundred nuts were recorded with a flatbed scanner, producing
easily segmented images with shading of the surface brightness
because of the objects’ 3D shape. Using just measurements of size
and shape from the 2D projected images, it is possible to classify
the nuts. As shown in the figure, using one size measurement
(length) and 2 dimensionless ratio shape factors produces a plot in
3D that does not completely separate the nut classes. Form factor is
calculated as 4π•Area/Perimeter2 as described above. Radius ratio
is the ratio of the maximum inscribed radius to the minimum
circumscribed radius.
Using the measured data for linear discriminant analysis, per-
formed in SAS JMP-9, calculates canonical variables that are linear
combinations of the measured parameters, and define new axes
such that the classes are optimally separated, and covariance is
eliminated as shown. Several other combinations of measured size
and shape data were also able to provide separation of the classes. In
many cases it is practical to use the mean value and standard devia-
tion of the clusters of points for each class as parametric descriptors
to quickly identify objects and establish a confidence level for the
identification. Examples include identifying weed seeds that are
accidentally mixed with seeds for crops, or the source of various
defects in processed food products.
Image analysis of foods . . .
For Further Reading
Digital images contain a wealth of information that can be ex-
tracted by appropriate processing, measurement, and subsequent
analysis. The examples shown here represent only a small fraction
of the possibilities. Many texts are available covering every aspect
of image processing and analysis. Books such as Russ (2011) illus-
trate the application of a wide spectrum of image processing and
analysis operations, many of them with food-related examples. For
a deeper analysis of shape measurements, Costa and Cesar (2009)
and Neal and Russ (2012) contain comprehensive details and ex-
amples. Stereological measurements of 3D structures based on 2D
image measurements are described in Russ and Dehoff (2001) and
Baddeley and Jensen (2005). Additional examples of image analysis
used for food-specific applications can be found in Aguilera and
Stanley (1999) and Russ (2004).
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