Thickness-compensated X-ray imaging detection of bone fragments in debonedpoultry - Model analysis

Detection Of bone fragments in poultry meat remains a challenge. In the ind ustrial deboning process, bone fragments often remain in chicken fillets, e scaping manual or x-ray machine defection. A new method was proposed to com pensate for x-ray absorption variations, which occur due to the uneven thic kness of fillets. Imaging detection algorithms were developed to integrate thickness and x-ray images and to produce a thickness-compensated x-ray ima ge for the extraction of bone fragment signals. Plastic molds with four dif ferent slopes were designed for forming poultry meat for conceptual tests a nd imaging algorithm development. Experimental results from sample analyses demonstrated that the four types of frequent and hard-to-detect bone fragm ents could be detected no matter where they were located in chicken meat of uneven thickness. The proposed imaging method eliminated the false pattern s and enhanced the sensitivity of x-ray in bone fragment detection. The tec hnique has the potential for non-destructive internal detection of hazardou s materials in food products with uneven thickness.