A Novel Approach to the Study of Bread Porous Structure: Phase‐contrast X‐Ray Microtomography

Abstract

The evaluation of bread quality can be carried out by performing a nondestructive investigation of its microstructure, which in turn can be performed by adapting image analysis techniques that enables one to obtain rapid, objective, and quantitative information. A suitable and reliable experimental methodology to investigate the porous structure of bread by means of the numerical image processing, and without any sample preparation, has been presented in this work. Different types of breads having varying degrees of porosity were studied by X-ray computerized phase-sensitive microtomography for the acquisition of digital high-resolution images. After acquisition, suitable numeric algorithms were applied to slice reconstruction. Finally, 3D images were rendered and analyzed.

Use of non-invasive X-ray microtomography for characterizing microstructure of extruded biopolymer foams

“…In order to distinguish it from CAT scanning, this technology will be referred to as high-resolution XMT. Some researchers have used CAT scanning or XMT for imaging the microstructure of food foams, but with very limited results (Falcone et al, 2004;van Dalen, Blonk, van Aalst, & Hendriks, 2003;Whitworth & Alava, 1999).…”

Applications of tomography in food inspection

“…X-ray microtomography has also proven to be a very useful technique for the noninvasive visualization and measurement of the internal microstructure of cellular food products, such as porous rice kernels and whipped cream (Van Dalen, Blonk, Van Aalst, & Hendriks, 2003), bread (Falcone et al, 2004(Falcone et al, , 2005Lassoued, Babin, Della Valle, Devaux, & Réguerre, 2007), cornflakes (Chaunier, Della Valle, & Lourdin, 2007), dough (Lampignano et al, 2012), extruded starches (Babin, Della Valle, Dendievel, Lourdin, & Salvo, 2007), biopolymer foams (Trater et al, 2005) and to study the microstructure, textural and sensorial properties of durum wheat bread as affected by yeast content (Lampignano et al, 2012). The fat content in food products is a very important compound, and nowadays, lots of meat, dairy and emulsion products with different fat contents and different physical and chemical features (protein network, moisture content, ingredients, additives and so on) are being manufactured.…”

The Application of Image Acquisition and Analysis Techniques to the Field of Drying

“…The method involved continuously scanning cross sections of a sample with a spatial resolution of 10 lm. Since then, this imaging technique has been successfully used in several fields, e.g., geology [77,140], biology [6,116], food [24,84], and foam characterization [103,104].…”