Food Quality Control via TeraHertz Imaging

This work deals with THz non invasive surveys for food quality control. The study presents the results of two experiments carried out by means of a THz Time Domain system. Time of flight imaging and reflectivity maps are employed to achieve information about the analyzed samples. The first experiment regards chocolate cream samples and aims at assessing the capability of revealing contaminants and defects, including surface and shallow subsurface foreign bodies. Chocolate cream samples are inspected with and without a cover simulating real packaging conditions. The second experiment is referred to dough and aims at assessing the capability of monitoring the variation of water content over time. To this, an unbaked dough left to dry at room temperature is repeatedly measured. The results of the experiments confirm the potentiality of using THz imaging for the investigated applications, provided that suitable processing strategies of the measured data are performed.