Chemical footprint by means of Hyperspectral vision

To ensure food safety and quality, guarantee the absence of foreign bodies, measure composition or detect non visible defects automatically and in a non destructive way is currently possible thanks to the hiperespectral vision. Hyperspectral vision is a technology able to obtain the chemical footprint of every single point of a sample. Infrared light is projected into the sample and depending on the composition it is absorbed in different infrared spectrum bands. By analyzing the fingerprint (spectrum), artificial images are obtained with different colours assigned to the different compositions. The result is a chemical map where it can be clearly differentiated the shape and the chemical composition of every single point of the sample. ainia technology centre has an own designed hyperspectral system that works between 400nm and 2.500nm. The centre has been working on the design and its set up as well as carrying out ad-hoc projects in many different food and non-food sectors for 8 years. The technology can be used for many purposes: - Meat sector: it can be used to measure sample quality, composition, bacterial contamination or adulteration - Fish sector: freshness, the texture and parasites presence - Fruits and veggies: internal and external defects, deseases and ripeness - Nuts and snacks: moisture, fat content and foreign bodies detection - Ready to eat products: foreign bodies detection - Food ingredients : quality control The hyperspectral vision is an innovative approach characterized by: - It is measured the full fingerprint (spectrum) - The analysis can be performed in real time by means of intensive computational calculation hardware - Chemical properties and composition can be measured Main advantages of the technology vs conventional solutions: - It is possible to measure chemical properties while conventional artificial vision can only measure physical properties (colour, shape, size) - A composition map can be obtained whilst infrared spectroscopy can only measure composition in one point - It is a flexible technology that can simultaneously measure the composition and detect foreign bodies with a different chemical footprint from the product of interest