See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/326273359

Noninvasive techniques for detection of foreign bodies in food: A review

Article  in  Journal of Food Process Engineering · July 2018

DOI: 10.1111/jfpe.12808

CITATION READS

1 724

4 authors:

Mohd Taufiq Mohd Khairi Sallehuddin Ibrahim

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
24 PUBLICATIONS   53 CITATIONS    30 PUBLICATIONS   161 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Mohd Amri Md Yunus Mahdi Faramarzi

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia -
76 PUBLICATIONS   428 CITATIONS    29 PUBLICATIONS   88 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Meliponiculture View project

Agarwood View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Mohd Taufiq Mohd Khairi on 30 August 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Received: 9 November 2017 | Revised: 19 March 2018 | Accepted: 4 April 2018

DOI: 10.1111/jfpe.12808

REVIEW ARTICLE

Noninvasive techniques for detection of foreign

bodies in food: A review

Mohd Taufiq Mohd Khairi | Sallehuddin Ibrahim | Mohd Amri Md Yunus |

Mahdi Faramarzi

Department of Control and Mechatronics

Engineering, Faculty of Electrical
Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia,
Skudai, Johor 81310, Malaysia
Correspondence
Sallehuddin Ibrahim, Department of Control
and Mechatronics, Engineering, Faculty of
Electrical, Engineering, Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia, Skudai, Johor 81310, Malaysia.
Email: salleh@fke.utm.my
Funding information
Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia
(MyBrain15 program); Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia, Grant/Award Numbers: 15H85
and 4J255
Abstract
Foreign body in food is a matter of concern in food industry as it determines the safety and quality
of the product. This issue leads to anxiety as it is hazardous if it is accidentally being consumed.
Therefore, foreign body detection is urgently needed. Noninvasive techniques are attractive as
they can be used to evaluate without altering the originality of the food products in terms of ingre-
dient and structure. With the growing interest in this subject, this article reviews the development
of noninvasive techniques including X-ray, thermal imaging, near-infrared spectroscopy, hyperspec-
tral imaging, ultrasonic, and terahertz. The principle and application of each technique are
elaborated. The performances and limitations from previous studies in several types of food appli-
cations are analyzed. In addition, future trends and challenges encountered with these techniques
are highlighted. It is envisaged that the information gathered in this article will be a valuable source
of information for researchers working in this topic.
Practical applications
The existence of foreign bodies in food causes degradation of their quality and safety. The imple-
mentation of the noninvasive technique as a monitoring tool have received an encouraging
response from the manufacturers which endeavors to maintain their credibility and reputation.
This review serves to provide an up-to-date development on the noninvasive technique for detect-
ing foreign bodies which is useful for academicians and researchers especially from the food
processing industries.

1 | INTRODUCTION
Foreign body is referred to as any extraneous object or foreign matter
in food item which may cause illness or complications to a person at
the time of consumption. Foreign body might accidently enter food
due to unsanitary conditions during production, processing, handling,
storage and distribution of food. Foreign bodies’ sources are catego-
rized into two types; intrinsic and extrinsic (Edwards & Stringer, 2007).
Intrinsic type refers to the detected foreign bodies which are related to
the food and resulted from the process of preparing foods. Examples
of these might include fruit stalks in dried fruit and bone fragment in a
meat product. Whereas for extrinsic types, the foreign bodies that exist
are not directly related to the food product such as the presence of
Two potential reviewers of the manuscript (1) Dr. Jayani Chandrapala (Email:
jayani.chandrapala@rmit.edu.au) and (2) Prof. Dr. Michael Ngadi (Email: michael.
ngadi@mcgill.ca).
glass, metal, or rubber. The risk level foreign body depends on the size,
type, hardness, and sharpness of the object. The existence of foreign
body in food can cause choking when it is eaten. There are also cases
where surgery was required to remove the foreign body as reported in
(Bansal, Singh, Mangal, Mangal, & Kumar, 2017; Hyman, Klontz, &
Tollefson, 1993; Olsen, 1998). Such cases may result in the food
manufacturer losing customers’ trust and incurring significant losses.
Food manufacturers will perform several investigations at every
line of operation, starting from the collection of the raw materials until
the delivery process to determine whether it is a foreign body or not
(Lewis, 1993; Marsh & Angold, 2004). From the results, they will esti-
mate the types of materials that may be produced together with the
food and will ensure the food is safe from contamination. Other than
that, they also refer to the records of customers’ complaints to deter-
mine whether it is foreign body or not. However, they need to be care-
ful regarding the customer complaints because sometimes the alleged

J Food Process Eng. 2018;e12808. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jfpe V

C 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. | 1 of 20
https://doi.org/10.1111/jfpe.12808
2 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI
foreign body is impossible to be found in the type of food that they
produced. Mostly, the case is due to sabotage by the employees of the
company and the consumers themselves (James, 2005; Marsh &
Angold, 2004). Sabotage by employees is difficult to be detected
because it can be carried out in any phase starting from the production
phase until the delivery phase. The contamination which originated
from the consumers may occur, for example when they opened the
cap of a can using a can opener. The can fragment may accidently enter
the food when they pull and rotate the can opener.
Foreign bodies like stone and insects may come from unsanitized
factory environment (Woh, Thong, Behnke, Lewis, & Mohd Zain,
2016). It also can exist in each operating unit such as in processing,
handling, distribution, storage and delivery unit (Stringer & Hall, 2007).
In the processing and handling unit, the objects that could be present
are glass, nuts, bolts, grease, and hair. The failure of machine system
and the employees’ negligence are the biggest contributors to the exis-
tence of such object. The process of early detection and removal of the
object is vital before the product is moved to the next processing stage.
Early removal is very important to ensure that the machinery and the
equipment in the next production line are not damaged due to these
objects. Objects like metal and stone fragment may cause damage to
the cutting or chopping tools as they are cut together with the raw
food such as fruit or meat (Stringer & Hall, 2007; Trafialek, Kaczmarek,
& Kolanowski, 2016). For example, the metal blade of a food process-
ing system may cracks resulting in small fragments of the blade to
break off into the food. In the distribution and storage process, there is
a risk when a food container is made of glass. The container can crack
when it hits hard object like pallets and the glass fragments unexpect-
edly mixed with the food (Edwards & Stringer, 2007). Besides, the food
products should be kept and placed in a safe and clean environment as
well as maintained at a suitable temperature to ensure insects or pests
are not attracted. In the delivery unit, the transportation storage sys-
tem plays a vital role in ensuring that the product is distributed safely
to the retailers and shops. Several issues of concern such as the storage
temperature level for the transportation, cleanliness and time span for
delivering the product. This precautionary measure may minimize the
probability of the food product from being contaminated.
Early detection of foreign bodies is an important control measure
in ensuring the safety and quality of food product. The food industry
makes numerous efforts to avoid unwanted foreign objects in food.
The conventional methods that have been used to detect foreign
bodies include: metal detector, magnet, electrical impedance, and sur-
face penetrating radar. Although these methods are simple and reliable,
their weaknesses have restricted their applications. Nonconductive
materials such as plastic and glass cannot be detected using metal and
magnet detection system. Electrical impedance and surface penetrating
radar do not work well with metallic or foil packaging. The noninvasive
technique has gained attention as the evaluation process can be per-
formed without affecting the ingredient and the original form of the
food. Many different noninvasive techniques have been studied and
developed for detecting foreign bodies. However, each technique has
its own advantages and limitations under different application condi-
tions. There have been some reviews of this topic such as in Graves,
ET AL.
Smith, and Batchelor (1998), Edwards (2004), and Peariso (2006).
Although review work has previously been done, many novels noninva-
sive techniques have come into sight in recent years. Therefore, it
becomes an impetus for this review. In this article, a review on the lat-
est techniques and approaches has been conducted to give a clear
viewpoint on applications for detecting the foreign bodies. The funda-
mental principles of the technique including X-ray, thermal imaging,
near-infrared spectroscopy, hyperspectral imaging, ultrasound, and ter-
ahertz are briefly elaborated. Various research regarding those tech-
nique for detecting foreign bodies in several types of foods are also
analyzed and discussed. The advantages and disadvantages for each
technique are also expounded in this article.
2 | NONINVASIVE TECHNIQUES
The various densities of the foreign bodies provide a challenge to the
sensor’s ability (Mohammadi, Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti, Ebrahimi, &

, Ch

Abbasvali, 2014; Salazar, Turo avez, & García, 2004). High density
materials such as metal and stone are more easily distinguished by
most of the sensing techniques. However, not all conventional techni-
ques can detect low density materials such as insect and plastic (Li, Liu,
Sun, Ma, & Ding, 2015). The detection process is easier in the case of
foods that have divergent phases compared to the foreign body. A sim-
ple case for example is the presence of foreign body in dairy or bever-
age product. The reliabilities of these technique sometimes are limited
if the type of food and foreign bodies are of the same phases. For
example, in the case of stone mixed with cereals, both stone and cere-
als are solid. It is difficult to detect as some imaging sensing techniques
have problems in distinguishing between the stone and the cereals.
However, the detection process may be easier if the shape and size of
the stone are significantly different compared to the cereals. Thus,
numerous initiatives and innovations have been carried out to improve
the reliability and capability of the sensors for such cases.
2.1 | X-ray
X-ray is a form of electromagnetic radiation having wavelengths and
photon energies in the range of 0.01 to 10 nm and 120 eV to 120 keV,
respectively (Mathiassen, Misimi, Bondø, Veliyulin, & Østvik, 2011). X-
ray is categorized as “soft X-ray” when the photon energy is up to
about 10 keV (10–0.10 nm wavelength), whereas those photon ener-
gies within the range from 10 to 120 keV (0.10–0.01 nm wavelength)
are classified as “hard X-rays” (Chen, Zhang, Zhao, & Ouyang, 2013). X-
ray can be used to identify the density characteristics of a specific
object/material and provide valuable information on any nonuniformity.
The system captures a greyscale image which reveals the density com-
position of the object. The compositional differences come from the
variation of X-ray attenuation which includes absorption and scattering
of transmitted ray (Lim & Barigou, 2004). Thus, the transmission level
of X-ray is determined by the mass as well as the absorption coefficient
of a sample. The X-ray technique consists of two types which are pla-
nar and computed tomography (CT). The planar type produced a two-
dimensional (2D) image after an X-ray generator emitted the ray to the
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.
object in a straight-line position. In the planar type, the X-ray absorp-
tion level is analyzed. On the contrary, CT used digital geometry proc-
essing to generate a three-dimensional image of the inside of an object
from a large series of one or two-dimensional X-ray images taken
around a single axis of rotation (Mathiassen et al., 2011). X-ray is
widely used for many applications such as construction, for example,
cement inspection and crack detection (Garboczi, 2002; Wang, Frost,
Voyiadjis, & Harman, 2003), to detect tumors and bone crack for medi-
cal application (Bandyopadhyay, Biswas, & Bhattacharya, 2016; Meinel
et al., 2014), painting analysis (Debastiani et al., 2016; Sun et al., 2014)
as well as food industry, for example, quality control (Haff & Toyofuku,
2008; Nicolaï et al., 2014) and characterization (Mousavi, Miri, Cox, &
Fryer, 2005; Schoeman, Williams, Plessis, & Du Manley, 2016). X-ray
has an edge in detecting food contamination as its ray has a stronger
penetrating power. The advantages of using the X-ray method are that
it can inspect the food product based on nondestructive measurement
and can offer a high imaging resolution. Conversely, X-ray has several
disadvantages such as high cost and high power usage (Haff &
Toyofuku, 2008; Pallav, Diamond, Hutchins, Green, & Gan, 2009).
There is a negative perception that X-ray radiation give a bad effect to
the food. However, several studies stated that radiation levels from 7.5
to 10 kGray used in food inspection are extremely low and do not
affect food’s nutritional value and is safe to eat (Ashley et al., 2004;
FAO/IAEA/WHO, 1999; Tauxe, 2001).
In food safety inspection, detection of foreign bodies on diverse
foods has been investigated. Morita, Ogawa, Thai, and Tanaka (2003)
applied a soft X-ray generator to detect various types of foreign bodies
in a loaf of bread, a hamburger steak and cabbage. Six types of foreign
bodies namely steel screws, aluminum rivets, staples, aluminum foil,
glass, plastic fragments, and grasshopper were used in this experiment.
The results showed that the metallic and nonmetallic types of foreign
materials contained in a load of bread and hamburger steak could be
detected by the soft X-ray measurement system. However, it cannot
detect the plastic fragments. The grasshopper image under the cabbage
leaves was identified using various filter methods such as sobel,
unsharped masking, and high pass filter.
Foreign bodies detection in sealed chili soup packages was investi-
gated by Chen, Jing, Tao, and Cheng (2005) using a real time X-ray
imaging method. The measurement system used a combination of edge
detection, region growing, and blob analysis techniques to obtain high
quality images. Metals and bone fragments were mixed with chili soup
bags and the scanning process was performed using an X-ray imaging
system which consisted of an X-ray camera, an image processing board,
an X-ray tube, and a control unit. Three parameters in the canny edge
detector, that is, standard deviation (r), high and low thresholds were
varied to evaluate the strong and weak edges. The standard deviation
was set between 1 and 2, while the high and low threshold values
were set between 0.6 and 0.8 and 0.3 and 0.5, respectively. The combi-
nation technique successfully distinguished the foreign bodies con-
tained in the chili soup.
Kwon, Lee, and Kim (2008) classified the foreign bodies in pack-
aged food using a real time X-ray imaging method. Three types of pack-
aged dry foods; instant ramen, macaroni, and spaghetti were used as
| 3 of 20
the food product. Several round shaped foreign bodies (stainless steel,
Teflon, aluminum, rubber, glass, and ceramics) with different diameters
were used. The minimum and maximum diameters are 0.3 mm and
8 mm, respectively. The results showed that the detection rate for for-
eign objects was above 98% without false positives. However, the
detection rate is low for small diameter (0.3–5 mm) as well as low den-
sity materials such as Teflon (2.18 g/cm3) and rubber (1.30 g/cm3).
Mery et al. (2011) used X-ray machine vision technique to detect
fish bones in fish fillets. The technique has several phases which begins
from image acquisition, followed by preprocessing, segmentation, fea-
ture extraction, classification, and finally post-processing. Salmon and
trout fillet products were used as food samples. Twenty samples of
salmon fillets were tested in which the average size of these fillets was
15 3 10 cm2. The ranges for fish bones were categorized as large size
(larger than 12 mm), medium size (between 8.5 and 12 mm), and small
size (smaller than 8.5 mm). The results showed that the percentages of
cross validation detection rate achieved were 100, 98.5, and 93.5% for
large, medium, and small fish bones, respectively. The trout fillet was
tested using fish bones ranging from 14 to 47 mm and showed 99%
percentage of detection.
A transmission and dark-field X-ray imaging with a grating interfer-
ometer was developed by Nielsen, Lauridsen, Christensen, and
Feidenhans’l (2013) to detect foreign bodies in food. The grating inter-
ferometer has an ability to record simultaneously the transmission,
phase-contrast, and dark-field images for obtaining the multiple inde-
pendent mechanisms of contrast. Minced beef and a cultured sour
cream were used as food product which were mixed with three differ-
ent types of foreign materials. Glass, four layers of papers and a lady-
bug were inserted into the minced beef. The cultured sour cream was
mixed with eight layers of paper, a cigarette butt and a fly. Contrast-to-
noise ratio (CNR) measurement is used to analyze the contrast
between foreign bodies and the food product where a high CNR value
indicated that the contrast between them is significantly higher than
the noise in the image. In minced meat, the dark-field image shows
higher CNR value for papers and ladybug. But for glass, a CNR value of
2.3 was obtained. Conversely, the result shows that the dark-field
image gives a high CNR for all foreign bodies mixed with the sour
cream than the transmission image. Papers, cigarette butt, and a fly
resulted in CNR values of 2.8, 6.3, and 2.9 for dark-field image com-
pared to the transmission image which gave CNR values of 0.4, 0.7,
and 0.2, respectively.
A dual-view X-ray inspection system to identify glass fragments in
a glass jar was developed by Lu and Peng (2013). The scanning process
of the glass jar was performed by placing two X-ray generators in two
orthogonal directions. The method was able to solve the blind area
problem as it generated two pairs of X-ray images. Algorithms such as
adaptive image segmentation based on contour tracking and nonlinear
arctan function transform were implemented to obtain a high detection
sensitivity and high-quality images. Five glass fragments of different
sizes from 3 to 10 mm were placed at the top, middle and bottom of
the jar. The results showed that the measurement system was capable
of generating a high-quality images of the jar and glass fragments and
the average detection rate was 92.9%.
4 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.

F I G U R E 1 (a) Image of the milk powder contaminated with the polyethylene (PE) plastic. (b) Image of the hollow cylinder inserted in
minced pork meat. (c) Image of the hay powder mixed with milk powder (Li et al., 2015)

Niemeyer (2015) investigated food contaminated with foreign
objects by utilizing the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) in conjunc-
tion with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS). The EDS analysis
provided a qualitative spectrum which revealed the food components.
Two cases were studied; bakery products adulterated with glass frag-
ment and powder seasoning mixed with metal particles. The EDS analy-
sis demonstrated that the foreign materials can be discovered by
showing the material components inside the food based on the qualita-
tive spectrum.
Li et al. (2015) applied a confocal micro X-ray scattering technol-
ogy based on polycapillary X-ray lens to detect foreign bodies in food.
The technique used a polycapillary focusing X-ray lens (PFXRL) in the
excitation channel and a polycapillary parallel X-ray lens (PPXRL) in the
detection channel. Two types of food samples were tested, that is, milk
powder and minced pork meat. The experiment was conducted using
foreign bodies which had a low density and low atomic number (Z) of
chemical element. A polyethylene (PE) plastic, hay powder, and a hol-
low cylinder were selected as foreign bodies. The PE plastic has a den-
sity of 0.926–0.940 g/cm3 and a dimension of 2 3 1 3 2 mm, whereas
the hollow cylinder has a density of 1.19 g/cm3, 15 mm external diame-
ter, and 5 mm internal diameter. A PE plastic and hay powder were
used to contaminate the milk powder, whereas a hollow cylinder was
mixed with the minced pork meat. The contaminated foods were
visualized using confocal 3D Compton scatter tomography as shown in
Figure 1a–c. The images show the foreign bodies which adulterated
the food product. Figure 1a shows the X-ray image of layers of the PE
plastic inserted in the milk powder where the gray level reflected the
changes in the X-ray intensity and different densities of samples. Figure
1b,c shows the X-ray images of the hollow cylinder inserted in the
minced pork meat and hay powder adulterated in the milk powder,
respectively.

ttir et al. (2016) used grating-based multimodal X-ray
Einarsdo
imaging to visualize several types of foreign bodies. Seven food sam-
ples, that is, minced meat, steak, turkey schnitzel, salami slices, sliced
cheese, wheat bread, and rye bread were adulterated with eight differ-
ent foreign bodies (glass, metal, wood, insects, hard plastic, soft plastic,
rubber, and stones). This grating-based technique provided three imag-
ing modalities; conventional absorption X-ray, phase contrast imaging,
and dark-field imaging which generate improved contrast capabilities
compared to the conventional X-ray absorption imaging technique. The
Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm was developed to compare
the X-ray imaging modality detection results and to determine the gain
of multivariate and texture analysis. Figure 2 shows the results when
turkey schnitzel products were contaminated with eight foreign bodies.
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.
F I G U R E 2 Images obtained for turkey schnitzel products with foreign bodies. From left to right: absorption, phase contrast, and dark-field
imaging (Einarsdo
ttir et al., 2016)
The level of contrasts between these three modalities were obtained
by normalizing gray profiles at the 250th row of each image. The dark-
field model has the most contrast as it was able to display all foreign
bodies.
2.2 | Thermal imaging
Thermal energy is the part of electromagnetic radiation within the
range of 0.78–1,000 mm. In thermal imaging, the radiation pattern of an
object is transformed into visible images (Vadivambal & Jayas, 2011).
The temperature and emissivity of objects affected the level of
released radiation (Orina, Manley, & Williams, 2017). Thermal imaging
systems typically consists of a camera, an optical system (focusing lens,
collimating lenses, and filters), a detector array, signal processing, and
an image-processing system (Gowen, Tiwari, Cullen, McDonnell, &
O’Donnell, 2010). An example of a measurement setup for the system
is shown in Figure 3.
FIGURE 3 An example of a thermal imaging measurement setup.
(A) operating terminal; (B) thermal camera; (C) heat lamps; (D)
sample stage; (E) USB power relay for lamp control (Kuzy & Li,
2017)
| 5 of 20
A thermal imaging system is classified into two types; active or
passive thermal imaging systems. An active system requires the appli-
cation of thermal energy to produce a thermal contrast between the
features of interest and the background. In contrast, a passive system
does not need to apply any external energy to the object because the
features of interest are naturally at a higher or lower temperature than
the background (Chen et al., 2013). The thermal imaging technique was
initially applied in military applications where it can be used to detect
the presence of human especially at night. Then, the application is used
in other fields such as medicine (Kateb, Yamamoto, Yu, Grundfest, &
Gruen, 2009; Lahiri, Bagavathiappan, Jayakumar, & Philip, 2012), fire
safety (Amon, Hamins, Bryner, & Rowe, 2008), agriculture (Baranowski,
Mazurek, Wozniak, & Majewska, 2012; Mangus, Sharda, & Zhang,
2016; Stajnko, Lakota, & Hočevar, 2004), and food industry (Gowen
et al., 2010; Jha et al., 2011). In the medical field, thermal imaging is
used to diagnose cancer, dental, blood pressure, and fever. Meanwhile
in the fire safety field, thermal imaging has been successfully used to
detect hot spots, search/rescue operation and identify the location of
hazardous materials. In agriculture, it is widely used to monitor fruit
maturity, predicting fruit yield, and detecting fruit disease. Thermal
imaging is useful in various applications as it is a noncontact measure-
ment, does not emit harmful radiation and can operate in real-time
(Gowen et al., 2010). However, the technique needs to overcome tem-
perature interference from other surfaces which has restricted its appli-
cations (Jha et al., 2011).
In the food industries, Meinlschmidt and Maergner (2002) success-
fully developed an infrared thermography to detect foreign bodies in
raisins and almonds product. The thermography system consists of a
heating and a cooling unit, a thermographic camera, an image process-
ing unit, and a conveyor belt. Several wooden sticks and stones were
used as foreign bodies and were mixed with the raisins and almonds
6 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.

product, respectively. They used the Thermosensorik-System CMT

384 M4 thermographic camera which can detect 3.4–5.2 mm of infra-
red radiation range. The emissivity coefficients and heat conductivity
were analyzed to distinguish the foreign bodies. The heat conductivity
technique provided better results than the emissivity coefficients as
the value of emissivity coefficients between the food products and for-
eign materials are very close. The heat conductivity technique was
applied by adding an extra heat source to the product when the prod-
uct moved on the conveyor belt. The images of the food product and
foreign bodies were obtained based on the gray levels value.
Ginesu et al. (2004) continued the research using the same mea-
surement system. They successfully improved the images by applying
an interactive selection of the best sequence of image processing oper- FIGURE 4 An example of near-infrared spectroscopy measure-
ations. The preprocessing started with a dead pixel correction, followed ment setup (Kamruzzaman et al., 2011)
by first enhancement filter application, second enhancement filter
application, shading correction, and finally histogram stretching. The 2.3 | Near-infrared spectroscopy and hyperspectral
correction of dead pixels was performed by substituting each dead imaging
pixel value with a correct one. Convolution, rank, or morphological fil-
Near Infrared spectroscopy (NIR) is a type of vibrational spectroscopy
ters were implemented for the first enhancement filter, followed by a
that produced photon energy in the range of 2.65 3 10219 to 7.96 3
median filter for the second enhancement filter. Next, the shading
10220 Joule which is the range of wavelength for near-infrared light
problem was corrected by acquiring a background image and sub-
from 750 to 2,500 nm (Wang & Paliwal, 2007). The bond vibrations
tracted from the original one. Lastly, a histogram stretching was per-
between the atoms of organic molecules such as OAH, CAH, and
formed for rendering the image. The algorithm implementation based
NAH caused the change of energy when exposed to NIR light (Li, Sun,
on local thresholding, rank order statistics, and morphological operators
& Cheng, 2016). The resulting patterns of absorption/reflection across
showed an improvement on the image quality index between the food
the wavelength can be used to obtain the characteristic and features of
product and foreign bodies.
the material tested. NIR spectral imaging has been successfully applied
Bukowska-Belniak et al. (2010) evaluated a chocolate bar contami-
to several food types such as fish (Mathiassen et al., 2011), milk (Huang
nated with several foreign bodies. Stone, plastic, and glass fragments
et al., 2016), rice (Kong, Zhang, Liu, Nie, & He, 2013), and lamb
were located at different depths below the surface of chocolate bar.
(Kamruzzaman, Elmasry, Sun, & Allen, 2011) for analyzing their quality
The chocolate bar was heated up to a temperature level of 26 8C, and
and texture. Figure 4 shows an example of the NIR measurement setup.
then, it was cooled down to 16 8C before the images were captured
It consists of a camera for capturing the image, a spectrograph to sepa-
using a thermographic camera. Image processing was carried out as fol-
rate light into a frequency spectrum, lens for adjusting the receiving
lows; first, object detection was based on images chosen via visual
light, an illumination unit for determining the spectral range of the sys-
observation, and second, the results were used to identify the most
contrastive images. The results demonstrated that the contaminants’ tem, a translation stage for putting samples of food and a motor for

materials can be detected successfully by generating a sequence of moving the food (Kamruzzaman et al., 2011). There are two categories

thermographic images. of light sources for spectrometric measurements; thermal sources and

Research on the detection of foreign bodies in biscuits using infra- nonthermal source (Osborne, Fearn, & Hindle, 1993). Thermal sources

red thermography was carried out by Senni et al. (2014). A comparative
analysis of the thermal emissivity of foreign bodies and of biscuits
decay was performed. Biscuits’ dough was contaminated with several
types of foreign bodies such as stone, glass, plastic, wood, paper, and
textile fiber. The size range of the foreign bodies was from 1 to 3 mm.
The dough was cooked for 6 min at a temperature around 250 8C. Hun-
dred and seventy thermal images was collected after the biscuits
cooled down and reached the room temperature. The result demon-
strated that most of the foreign bodies can be detected by the ther-
mography measurement system. They also used a thermocamera
model FLIR A-315 to perform on-line measurement where it has a
maximum frame rate of 60 Hz and it was able to cover an area of
25 cm 3 20 cm. The generated images were normalized before a two-
fold thresholding procedure was applied. Finally, the biscuits and for-
eign bodies were classified.
such as tungsten halogen lamps produce radiation spanning a continu-
ous spectral region. However, this type of source disturbs the tempera-
ture stability of the testing material (Butz, Hofmann, & Tauscher, 2006).
Light emitting diodes (LED) and lasers are some examples of nonthermal
sources where the sources produce radiation within a narrow spectral
band. It is low cost, portable, and has variation of emission wavelengths
(McClure, Moody, Stanfield, & Kinoshita, 2002).
NIR has several advantages such as it is a nonionizing technique
and its ability to penetrate air gaps within the food materials (Pallav,
Diamond, et al., 2009). NIR is also capable of discovering a small ele-
ment in the food internal structure as it can capture the image in the
wavelength’s nanometer range (Tsuta, Takao, Sugiyama, Wada, &
Sagara, 2006). NIR computes a mean spectrum of a sample and pro-
vides a single spectrum, but the information data may be insufficient
and complex to analyze. NIR has some limitations as it depends on
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.
F I G U R E 5 (a) A block cheese mixed with a 10 mm rubber piece. (b) Meat sample containing an absorbent Blu-Tack material (Pallav,
Diamond, et al., 2009)
reference methods for calibration purpose (Jha et al., 2011; Manley,
2014). A technique called hyperspectral is proposed which made use of
a mixture of red green blue (RGB) and grayscale (Huang, Liu, & Ngadi,
2014). The hyperspectral image (HSI) produced three axes where the x-
axis and the y-axis represent the spatial dimension, while the z-axis
denotes the wavelength (Liu, Pu, & Sun, 2017). The hyperspectral anal-
ysis involved the acquisition of a heap image of the same object at dif-
ferent spectral bands. In HSI, samples experienced different amount of
scattering, reflection, absorption, and emission of electromagnetic
energy depending on the physical and chemical structures
(Moghaddam, Razavi, & Taghizadeh, 2013; Siche et al., 2016). The ana-
lytical information from the spectra is extracted and analyzed through
the application of multivariate analysis tools such as artificial neutral
networks and principal component analysis to expose the differences
between analyzed samples (Orina et al., 2017). HSI has the advantages
of being able to provide spatial and spectral information. It is also sensi-
tive to minor components. However, the limitation of HSI is the
lengthy time required for pre-processing of data and classification
(Senni, Burrascano, & Ricci, 2016; Xiong, Sun, Zeng, & Xie, 2014).
Tsuta et al. (2006) developed a foreign materials detection method
for blueberries product using a spectral imaging technique. Foreign
materials such as leaves, twigs, and stones were dyed in the same color
as blueberries by soaking them in the blueberry juice. Spectral images
were acquired at 660, 680, and 700 nanometer (nm) to develop a sec-
ond derivative absorbance image at 680 nm. Fifty two blueberries sam-
ples and 26 foreign materials were used for the analysis where the
second derivative absorbance and mean values were calculated. The
probability of a pixel containing a foreign material was measured and a
pixel larger than 0.95 was considered as a foreign material. The results
showed that the foreign materials can be detected in the blueberry
sample.
A NIR imaging system was developed by Pallav, Diamond, et al.
(2009) to detect foreign bodies in several types of foods. The NIR
| 7 of 20
system used 3 kHz sinusoidal modulation and has 850 nm of wavelength
which was able to detect a nonmetallic material. The images were gener-
ated based on data from the transmission mode technique. Several types
of food samples such as dough, cheese block, meat, and chocolate bar
were contaminated with different types of foreign bodies (coin, glass
ball, and rubber). Figure 5a shows the image produced when the block
cheese was mixed with a 10 mm rubber piece. Figure 5b illustrates a
meat sample containing an absorbent Blu-Tack material. The meat was
placed in a plastic packaging and consists of a layer of paper at the base
of the container. It was observed that at a wavelength of 850 nm, NIR
signals were easily transmitted across the meat sample. The highly
attenuating Blu-Tack was detected with a high contrast which is visible
as the white area in the NIR image of Figure 5b. The results revealed
that the NIR system was able to generate the image which is very useful
in monitoring food condition and food quality.
NIR spectral imaging was applied by Sugiyama et al. (2010) to
observe leaves and stems in blueberry product. Discriminant analysis of
absorbance spectra was used to determine the optimal illumination
wavelengths of foreign materials. Two values, that is, 1,268 nanometer
(nm) and 1,317 nm were obtained. The absorbance images of blueber-
ries contained in the leaves and stems were generated based on these
values. The blueberry samples were stored at 218 8C to maintain their
quality and the samples for investigation were selected based on their
maturity and size. The images were produced from five samples for
each of the three sample types (blueberry, leaf and blueberry, stem,
and blueberry). The canonical discriminant function and threshold value
for image binarization were obtained by applying the discriminant anal-
ysis on the absorbance images. The results in Figure 6 shows binarized
images of the leaves and stems which were mixed with the blueberries.
The blueberry surface, the leaf, and the stem are clearly distinguished
from each other in the binary image. All canonical images using absorb-
ance images were taken at 1,268 and 1,317 nm. The threshold value
for binarization is 3.949. In the linear discriminant analysis, the
8 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.

FIGURE 6 Image binarization of blueberries with leaf and stem (Sugiyama et al., 2010)

discriminant function is calculated using spectral information on each
pixel only, and pixel locations are not used for distinction. Thus, the
accuracy of the discriminant analysis is not affected by the disposition
or number of foreign materials in the same image. The results show
that the accuracy of the discriminant function is sufficient for distin-
guishing the leaves and the stems from the blueberries.
Foreign bodies contained in ham slices and chocolate were suc-
cessfully distinguished by a NIR imaging system developed by Tashima
et al. (2013). The NIR system has 40 superluminescent diodes (SLDs) as
light sources and a wide dynamic range CMOS sensor. The ham slices
and chocolates were contaminated by inserting hairs (0.1 mm in diame-
ter) and insects (3 mm in width) at a depth of 2.6 mm from the surfa-
ces. The image contrasts between the foods and foreign bodies were
improved and sharpened by cutting out the low spatial frequency data.
The foreign substances were clearly distinguished from the foods in
the images. Phetchalern et al. (2014) continued the investigation using
the same NIR measurement system and successfully detected a
wooden stick having a diameter of 0.3 mm in ham slices.
Jiang, Zhu, Rao, Berney, and Tao (2007) used hyperspectral fluo-
rescence imaging to visualize shell and pulp in black walnuts product.
The walnuts images obtained from the hyperspectral system were clas-
sified using three different techniques; Gaussian-kernel based support
vector machine (SVM), principal component analysis (PCA), and Fisher’s
discriminant analysis (FDA). Four samples were categorized based on
four conditions, that is, light pulp, dark pulp, inside shell, and outside
shell. It was easy to visualize light pulp and inside shell. Conversely, it is
difficult to visualize dark pulp and outside shell. Six thousand two hun-
dred and fifty seven data sets were used for training and testing sam-
ples in the statistical analysis. The SVM technique was found to be the
best approach in classifying the shell and pulp of walnut with a recogni-
tion rate of 90.3% compared to PCA and FDA which have recognition
rates of 87.7 and 85.8%, respectively.
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.
F I G U R E 7 Correlation graph between the seeded insect
fragments level and the predicted insect fragment level
(Bhuvaneswari et al., 2011)
Bones’ fragments contained in chicken breast fillets were investi-
gated by Yoon, Lawrence, Smith, Park, and Windham (2008) using a
hyperspectral imaging (HSI) technique. The HSI method which made
use of a combination of transmission and reflection was used and the
contrast of the images is very low due to the light scattering effects.
The images were improved by applying an illumination-transmittance
model to simplify bones detection using a single threshold. The image
processing algorithms incorporated histogram stretching, thresholding,
median filtering, and image fusion. The hyperspectral camera system
that was used in this investigation consisted of a spectrograph, a 12-bit
CCD camera, a focal plane scanner, and a front lens. The average size
of the bones’ fragment was about 2.4-cm long and 0.2-cm thick and
they were inserted in twenty meat samples. The results showed that
the measurement system has a false-positive rate of 10%.
Bhuvaneswari et al. (2011) compared the NIR hyperspectral imag-
ing technique with the automatic speck counter technique to evaluate
semolina product contaminated with insect fragments. In their experi-
ment, they analyzed the insects based on the specks results obtained
from both techniques. The fragments of Tribolium castaneum species
were prepared at 0, 50, 75, 150, and 300 fragments per 50 g of semo-
lina. The NIR hyperspectral imaging system was implemented by scan-
ning an area of 200 3 200 pixels and the distributed wavelengths is in
the range of 1,000–1,600 nm. The mean reflectance spectrum was
measured by averaging the reflectance intensity values at each of the
61 wavelengths. Partial least-square (PLS) was integrated with the NIR
hyperspectral imaging to evaluate semolina product contaminated with
insect fragments. The use of partial least-square (PLS) regression
showed that a good correlation was obtained between the insect frag-
ments in the semolina and the specks value as shown in Figure 7.
When there were no insect fragments, the graph slope has a value of
0.893. Then, the test was performed by increasing the number of frag-
ments in semolina and a good response was obtained in which
| 9 of 20
R2 5 .992. The value is higher compared to the automatic speck coun-
ter which has R2 5 .767.


Díaz, Cervera, Fenollosa, Avila, and Belenguer (2011) used a hyper-
spectral system for detecting foreign materials in pork steaks products.
The hyperspectral system consisted of an infrared camera, a spectro-
graph and four infrared halogen lamps. Several types of foreign bodies
such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyethylene (PE), metal,
insects, and bone were prepared with different compositions and sizes
of 2 3 2 mm, 5 3 5 mm, and 10 3 10 mm. The images were obtained,
and a multivariate analysis was applied to evaluate the data sets and
images of each sample. The principle components analysis (PCA) was
applied to select the best data reduction and discrimination abilities.
The result obtained by PCA was used in the Fischer discriminant analy-
sis to classify each point of the sample. A new image was generated
after implementing the discriminant functions and the results showed
that most of the evaluated materials can be detected.
A NIR hyperspectral imaging system also was applied by Gowen &
O’Donnell (2013) to identify and classify foreign bodies in grains prod-
uct. The hyperspectral imaging system was operated in the diffuse
reflection mode in the wavelength range of 950–1,700 nm. Two types
of grain samples were assessed which is a uniform sample of white rice
grains and a mixed variety grain sample. Plastic shards, glass beads and
rubber fragments were used as foreign bodies. The glass samples
exhibited a very low spectral response whereas the plastic and rubber
samples exhibited characteristic absorbance of near infrared (NIR) radi-
ation at certain wavelengths. The maximal variance projection was
obtained using the principal components analysis (PCA) where the data
was used for detection and identification of foreign bodies. The study
indicated that the NIR reflectance approach could detect and identify
all types of foreign bodies among grain samples.
2.4 | Ultrasonic
Ultrasound is referred to as sound waves above the frequencies of
audible sound, nominally greater than 20 kHz. (Awad, Moharram, Shalt-
out, Asker, & Youssef, 2012). An ultrasonic wave is generated when
the elastic deformation in ferroelectric material is in high frequency
range. A high-frequency current was transmitted via two electrodes to
the ferroelectrical material which subsequently produced an ultrasonic
wave (Knorr, Zenker, Heinz, & Lee, 2004). Ultrasonic sensing is one of
the techniques that attracted interest in the food industry and has
been successfully used in several applications such as cavitation
(Bhaskaracharya, Kentish, & Ashokkumar, 2009; Chandrapala, Oliver,
Kentish, & Ashokkumar, 2012a; Kentish & Feng, 2014; Shanmugam,
Chandrapala, & Ashokkumar, 2012), emulsification (Abbas, Hayat,
Karangwa, Bashari, & Zhang, 2013; Freitas, Hielscher, Merkle, &
Gander, 2006; Leong, Wooster, Kentish, & Ashokkumar, 2009;
Mongenot, Charrier, & Chalier, 2000), and freezing (Chemat, Zill-
e-Huma, & Khan, 2011; Sigfusson, Ziegler, & Coupland, 2004; Zheng &
Sun, 2006). The sensing modes for the ultrasonic sensor are the trans-
mission, reflection and diffraction modes. The receiver is located in
front of the transmitter for the transmission mode. For the reflection
mode, the ultrasonic transmitter and receiver are located at the same
10 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI
FIGURE 8 €m & Luukkala, 2001)
The ultrasonic measurement setup (Hæeggstro
side. For the diffraction mode, the receiver should be placed in a suita-
ble position to obtain a precise diffracted signal. The change in wave-
form detected by the receiver can provide valuable information such as
attenuation, changes of velocity, time of flight, and acoustic impedan-
ces (Alava et al., 2007; Chandrapala, Oliver, Kentish, & Ashokkumar,
2012b). These parameters are exploited to investigate and analyze the
food properties. There are several advantages in using ultrasound in
the production line as it is a nondestructive sensing technique, it has a
fast response and it is able to perform high-velocity measurement
(Hauptmann, Hoppe, & Puttmer, 2002; Henning & Rautenberg, 2006;
Mcclements & Sundaram, 1997). However, an ultrasonic sensor is
limited to a single point measurement and it is very sensitive to the air
medium as the ultrasonic wave cannot propagate properly in the air.
This is due to a massive different of acoustic impedance between air
and other media (Jha et al., 2011). Ultrasonic sensors have widely been
applied for determining and evaluating the quality and safety of food
such as investigations conducted by Chandrapala et al. (2012b),
Chandrapala and Leong (2015), Kim, Lee, Kim, and Cho (2009), Elvira
et al. (2005) as well as Morrison and Abeyratne (2014).
Nonimaging and imaging techniques have been applied for detect-
ing foreign bodies in food using ultrasonic sensor. For the nonimaging
technique, the evaluation and analysis is based on ultrasonic parame-
ters such as sensing modes, velocity and attenuation. An ultrasonic
measurement system based on the reflection sensing mode was devel-
€m and Luukkala (2001) to investigate the presence
oped by Hæaeggstro
of foreign bodies. The measurement setup as shown in Figure 8 con-
sisted of a 5 MHz ultrasonic transducer, an oscilloscope, a preamplifier,
a computer, a pulser, and a receiver. They successfully detected various
sizes of bones, glass, steel as well as wood in marmalade and cheese
product. The food product was evaluated within the temperature range
of 0.5 to 22 8C where ice was used to control the temperature in the
basin. The results showed that all foreign bodies can be detected in all
kinds of food products. However, they have difficulties in determining
the types of foreign bodies whether it is bone, steel or glass. The best
result was obtained when the Naturelle cheese brand was assessed
where all types of foreign bodies could be detected and identified.
ET AL.
Zhao, Basir, and Mittal (2003) investigated various sizes of glass,
metal and plastic in bottled beverages using an ultrasonic sensor with a
nominal frequency of 15 MHz. The ultrasonic transducer was placed at
the bottom of the container and the wave was transmitted in an
upward direction. The tested frequencies were in the range from 5 to
10 MHz. A signal processing algorithm for time–frequency analysis was
used to discriminate between the beverage and the foreign substances.
Two ultrasonic echoes were evaluated to determine the size of foreign
bodies; the reflection waves at the outer container surface and the
reflection wave at the inner surface of the container. The pressure ratio
between the two echoes was analyzed. The pressure ratio was the low-
est value when there were no foreign bodies inside the container for
frequencies up to 8 MHz. They also attempted to detect a glass frag-
ment using an ultrasonic sensor based on a combination of the radial
basis function neural network algorithm and the short-time Fourier
transform (Zhao, Yang, Basir, & Mittal, 2006). The input features con-
sisted of parameters related to the glass fragment such as size, position,
orientation and the incident angle of the ultrasonic beam. The number
of neurons were varied from one to seven and they obtained a classifi-
cation rate of 95% at seven neurons.
Correia, Mittal, and Basir (2008) applied an ultrasonic sensing sys-
tem to detect bone fragments in deboned chicken breast. The ultra-
sonic transducer emitted a pulse of 4 MHz peak frequency. They used
a piston and cylinder apparatus to perform pulse-echo based ultrasonic
measurements for solid samples of variable heights. The bone frag-
ments sample was categorized as large (15.75 mm2), medium
(9.92 mm2), and small (6.18 mm2). Several parameters such as velocity,
impedance and amplitude ratio were used to determine the size of
bone fragment. From these parameters, the amplitude ratio showed a
better accuracy compared to other parameters. The system success-
fully classified the uncut samples, cut samples, and cut samples of the
bone fragments with a projected area of 6 to 16 mm2.
Leemans and Destain (2009) evaluated foreign bodies contained in
a semi-soft cheese based on the time of flight of the transmitted signals
and the echo signals. A plastic cylinder with a diameter of 3 mm was
inserted into the cheese. The experiment was conducted in varying
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.
F I G U R E 9 The tomographic images for the cans inserted by (a) a copper rod with a diameter of 6.6 mm (b) two aluminum rods each has a
diameter of 7.2 mm (Ho et al., 2007)
temperatures from 4 to 17 8C to observe the accuracy of the measure-
ment process. Signal-noise-ratio (SNR) values at different temperatures
for transmission, echo of the opposite face of the cheese and echo due
to the foreign body were evaluated and the results showed that the
system has a recognition rate of 90%.
Meftah and Mohd Azimin (2012) used pulse-echo ultrasonic test-
ing to detect foreign bodies in canned food. The evaluation was per-
formed using three types of foreign bodies having different sizes; a
rock (62 mm 3 38 mm) and two aluminum plates (30 mm 3 23 mm 3
4 mm and 122 mm 3 21 mm 3 1 mm) were placed inside an aluminum
tin container filled with water. An ultrasonic transducer of 4 MHz
placed on the container wall transmitted the wave and the wave was
reflected when it collided with the foreign bodies. The results showed
that the measurement system can detect the foreign bodies with a size
range of 1–4 mm.
A noncontact ultrasonic imaging technique was proposed by Cho
and Irudayaraj (2003) to distinguish foreign bodies in cheese and poul-
try product. The measurement system used a pair of 1 MHz ultrasound
transducers, where the velocity and the attenuation of the ultrasound
waves were enhanced using a noncontact air instability compensation
method. The method was performed by installing a ring shape refer-
ence in front of both transducer. It was used to monitor the air prop-
erty changes of the air column between a transducer and a reference
in real time. The air temperature was varied from 26.0 to 28.5 8C to
analyze the measuring system performance. Various sizes of metal rod,
metal fragments and a glass fragment were inserted to the cheese and
poultry product. Image of the food product were constructed and the
results showed that the metal and glass fragments which have a size of
3 mm 3 3 mm can be detected. The measurement system also suc-
cessfully identified a steel rod which has a length of 1.5 mm.
Foreign bodies in aluminum beverage cans were successfully
detected by Ho, Billson, and Hutchins (2007) using electromagnetic
acoustic transducers (EMAT). They modified the transmitter and
| 11 of 20
receiver sensors by adding the EMAT coil to generate and detect the
ultrasonic wave’s surrounding the cans. The pulse compression tech-
nique was used to improve the signal-noise-ratio (SNR) and images
inside the cans were reconstructed using the tomography method. The
measurement system was tested using a copper rod which has a diam-
eter of 6.6 mm and two aluminum rods in which each has a diameter
of 7.2 mm. Both materials were used as foreign bodies. The fan beam
technique was applied to reconstruct the image inside the can. The fan
beam technique demonstrated that several receivers had detected the
beam from a transmitter. Figure 9a shows the image of the cylindrical
container filled with water with a 6.6 mm diameter copper rod. The rod
is located at the coordinate (55, 35) mm. The images of the copper rod
can be observed as the wave could not propagate directly through the
rod. The experiment was conducted with two 7.2 mm diameter alumin-
ium rods located separately at the coordinates (15,33) mm and (48,48)
mm. The reconstructed image is shown in Figure 9b which shows the
position of the aluminium rod accurately despite the slight distortion.
An ultrasonic imaging system have been developed by Pallav, Hutchins,
and Gan (2009) to evaluate the presence of foreign bodies in cheese
products. The noncontact ultrasonic transmission mode technique was
implemented. A pulse compression technique was developed to obtain
an improved SNR ratio and measurement timing for solving the coupling
issue in air-couple measurement. Wood, rubber, and glass were used as
foreign materials and each type was placed separately in the cheese prod-
uct to investigate the reliability of the measurement system. The detec-
tion capability of the ultrasonic images was enhanced by forming images
from a combination of both amplitude and time-of-flight data. It was
required to overcome the lack of discrimination between the foreign
bodies and the natural background variations in the cheese. The ampli-
tude and time of flight were measured, and the cheese images were con-
structed based on these parameters to visualize the foreign substances.
The scanning images as shown in Figure 10 shows that the measurement
system is effective in detecting the foreign bodies in the cheese product.
12 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI
FIGURE 10 Images of a cheese sample containing of (a) rubber, (b) wood, and (c) glass, obtained using the ratio of the amplitude and time-
of-flight data (Pallav, Hutchins, & Gan, 2009)
2.5 | Terahertz
Terahertz waves lie between the microwave and infrared regions of
the electromagnetic spectrum in the frequency ranging between 0.3
and 10 THz and a wavelength range from 100 mm to 1 mm (Qin, Ying,
& Xie, 2013). It can be operated either in the transmission or the reflec-
tion mode and it can be used in the time and spatial domain. The radia-
tion energy ranging from 1 to 10 meV caused the molecules to vibrate
and rotate which bring out the wavelength properties of different
materials (Butz et al., 2006; Gowen, O’Sullivan, & O’Donnell, 2012).
Terahertz waves have several advantages to be used as a nondestruc-
tive test method as it generates low photon energy and it is able to
penetrate various materials (Gowen et al., 2012; Guillet et al., 2014). In
addition, terahertz waves also have low spatial resolution and low
signal-to-noise ratio (Kim et al., 2012). However, terahertz waves are
not appropriate for use in water medium as the signal is highly attenu-
ated (Pallav, Diamond, et al., 2009). Terahertz waves are widely used in
food quality monitoring such as moisture content determination (Chua
et al., 2005; Parasoglou et al., 2009), prediction of sugar and alcoholic
content (Jepsen, Møller, & Merbold, 2007), oil characterization
(Gorenflo et al., 2006; Jiusheng, 2010), and residue detection
(Redo-Sanchez et al., 2011; Yuefang & Hongjian, 2010).
€ rdens and Koch (2008) used a pulsed tera-
In food safety area, Jo
hertz imaging system to detect the presence of foreign bodies in choc-
olate. The experiment was conducted using a single pulse structure and
a double pulse structure. A single pulse structure was used to detect a
hazelnut as some chocolate product contains this ingredient. The dou-
ble pulse structure was utilized to detect nonmetallic foreign bodies
such as stone, glass and plastic fragments. All particles were buried
inside the chocolate bar. The experiment was performed using the inte-
grated intensities between 0.4 and 0.75 THz and the presence of for-
eign bodies was evaluated based on the refractive index. The results
showed that chocolate and hazelnuts have refractive indices of 1.75,
while plastic fragments have a lower value which is 1.5. However, high
ET AL.
values of refractive indices were obtained in the case of glass and stone
which have values of 2.6 and 1.9, respectively.
Kim et al. (2012) utilized a horn antenna in a continuous wave tera-
hertz imaging system to improve the quality of spatial resolution. The
horn antenna waveguide is smaller than the wavelength and it is able
to provide a high transmission power. The measurement system has a
frequency of 0.2 THz and its output power was larger than 10 mW.
Several sizes of foreign bodies such as aluminum foil, metallic cubes,
cubic stones, grasshopper and mealworms were placed in a flour sam-
ple. The application of a horn antenna demonstrated that it can detect
the size of foreign bodies less than 1 mm compared to 4 mm without
the horn antenna. Phantoms with shapes such as a star mark, a K logo,
squares, circles, and bars were created using aluminum foil, as shown in
Figure 11a to observe the improvement of spatial resolution in the
presence of the horn antenna. All shapes were attached to a sheet of
paper to prevent movement in the flour. The thickness of the flour was
4 mm and the diameter was 50 mm. The flour was fixed by plastic films
on both sides and the sample was located at the rear of the horn
antenna. Figure 11b,c shows the different qualities of the images con-
structed with a horn antenna and without a horn antenna, respectively
when several shapes and sizes of aluminum foil were inserted in the
flour. The minimum detectable size without the horn antenna was
above 4 mm. Conversely, the phantoms with a size of less than 1 mm
can be detected using the horn antenna. Thus, this method can suffi-
ciently detect objects in thicker samples. The other types of foreign
bodies (metallic cubes, cubic stones, grasshoppers and mealworms)
were adulterated in the flour with a diameter of 50 mm as shown in
Figure 12a,b shown the images obtained by the application of a horn
antenna.
The comparison between the continuous wave (CW) terahertz and
X-ray imaging techniques to visualize the foreign bodies in noodle was
performed by Lee, Choi, Han, Woo, and Chun (2012). Several sizes of
high and low-density materials were inserted into a powdered instant
noodle to contaminate the product. For high density materials, an
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL. | 13 of 20

FIGURE 11 (a) Foreign bodies with several sizes and shapes of aluminum foils. (b) An image obtained by the application of a horn antenna.
(c) An image obtained without the application of a horn antenna (Kim et al., 2012)

aluminum and granite had been selected, whereas for low density
materials, insects such as maggots and crickets were chosen. The
results demonstrated that the terahertz technique was capable of
detecting all sizes of high density and low density foreign bodies. In
contrast, the X-ray imaging technique cannot visualize a small size
maggot.
A sub-terahertz electron cyclotron resonance maser (gyrotron) was
developed by Han, Park, Ahn, Lee, and Chun (2012) to visualize foreign
bodies in a cracker product. The gyrotron is selected as it can generate
a high output power with good spatial patterns in a sub-THz region. It
was operated in the cavity mode which is 0.2 THz having a 9 kV beam
and 7.3 Tesla of the axial magnetic field strength. Two foreign bodies
which are soft type (dried fish) and hard type (metal fragment) were
placed inside the cracker. The images for the cracker were captured
using a pyroelectric array camera which has a video rate of 48 frames
per second. The foreign bodies were successfully visualized by the
measurement system and the results showed that a high power tera-
hertz radiation can improve the quality of the reconstructed images.
Ok, Choi, Park, and Chun (2012) proposed a sub-terahertz quasi-
Bessel beam (QBB) to distinguish the existence of foreign bodies in
instant noodles. The beam profile of QBB was analyzed using the
finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) and was compared to the knife
edge method and the point scanning method. The measurement sys-
tem consisted of a 210-GHz transmitter with an output power of 75
mW, a Schottky diode which acted as a receiver and a conical horn
antenna. Two sizes of crickets with dimensions of 35 mm 3 5.5 mm

FIGURE 12 (a) Foreign bodies of different sizes and materials in a flour sample (i) metallic cubes (ii) cubic stones (iii) grasshoppers (iv)
mealworms. (b) Images obtained by the application of a horn antenna (Kim et al., 2012)
14 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI
TA BL E 1 Image comparison between the sub-terahertz and the X-
ray imaging system showing (a) metals (b) insects (c) plastic (Ok
et al., 2014)
Foreign body Sub-terahertz X-ray
(a) Metal
(b) Insects
(c) Plastic
and 50 mm 3 7 mm were mixed with the noodle floor. The knife edge
method was initially investigated and the minimum spot size of QBB
and Gaussian beam was obtained. The point scanning method was
introduced to improve the image quality as the QBB cannot identify
the interference in the central core. The results showed that the QBB
produced sharper images compared to the images formed using the
Gaussian beam.
The research was extended by Ok, Kim, Chun, and Choi (2014) to
evaluate various sizes of low density (insect and polymer) and high den-
sity (metals) materials in a powdered milk. They developed a high-
resolution raster sub-terahertz scan imaging system where a Gaussian
beam focusing method was implemented to obtain the diffraction-
limited imaging. Images of foreign bodies were produced in the trans-
mission and the reflection mode. The images based on the transmission
mode demonstrated better results in classifying foreign bodies which
have low densities. A commercial X-ray inspection system (Intellisense
XIS-1300S) was used as a comparison with the sub-terahertz imaging
system. The X-ray system was operated at 60 kV and 3 mA with a
detection area of 256 3 256 mm , a pixel size of 400 mm and an inten-
2
sity depth of 4,096 (12 bits) gray value. Both sub-terahertz and X-ray
systems can visualize the metal foreign bodies, but the sub-terahertz
image resolution is shown to be inferior to that of the X-ray image as
shown in Table 1(a). The results obtained in Table 1(b) and Table 1(c)
revealed that images produced by the X-ray transmission mode has a
poor contrast and cannot distinguish the low-density materials, that is,
ET AL.
insects and plastic. However, the contrast of the insects and plastic
was very well been observed using the sub-terahertz transmission
image.
Lee and Lee (2014) utilized a terahertz imaging system to detect a
metal razor and a rubber fragment in powdered milk. The sizes of the
foreign bodies were between 2 and 10 mm. The source output was
shaped into a line beam and an array detector was used to achieve the
fast imaging process. Both types of foreign bodies could be detected at
a resolution of 0.8 and 1 mm. However, the metal has a lower transmit-
ted intensity compared to the rubber material due to higher absorption
and scattering losses.
Nonmetallic foreign bodies in packets of powder was examined by
Ikari, Takahashi, Fukasawa, and Duling (2014) using a terahertz mea-
surement system. The system consisted of a fiber coupled THz pulse
generation and detection system, a high-speed THz beam scanner, and
a data analysis algorithm. The maximum beam scan rate was 17
sweeps/s and the image with 100 3 100 pixels can be acquired in
10 s. A spatial correlation analysis of the waveform or a vector analysis
was applied to enable automatic detection of the foreign bodies. Fif-
teen types of resins consisting of Teflon and Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)
material were evaluated and the result showed that the terahertz mea-
surement system can visualize all resins except the Teflon fragment. It
is due to the terahertz characteristics of Teflon which are almost similar
to that of the lactose powder.
Yu et al. (2015) developed a high speed terahertz imaging system
using a continuous wave of 0.3 THz to evaluate the presence of a cat-
erpillar inside a chocolate product. They utilized an orthogonally polar-
ized THz wave for real-time imaging purpose. The scanning process
was performed when the chocolate was placed in a moving conveyor
belt which has a speed rate of 72 meters per minute. The imaging sys-
tem successfully showed that the caterpillar can be detected even
though the chocolate was packaged using a paper case. The applica-
tions of foreign bodies detection in various food products are summar-
ized in Table 2. The advantages and disadvantages of each technique
are tabulated in Table 3.
3 | CHALLENGES AND FUTURE TRENDS
Recent applications of noninvasive techniques for food safety and
quality evaluation especially for detecting the foreign body are sum-
marized in Table 2. However, the applications of the techniques are
based on their advantages and disadvantages as presented in Table 3.
The limitations which exist in each technique should be overcome to
enhance their capabilities and widen their applications. Most of the
discussed techniques are related to image processing which has some
constraint in real-time application as it has to deal with a large set of
data. An advance image processing algorithm with an adequate merg-
ing process onto the hardware is needed to minimize the processing
time. Problem also arises when the size/shape of the foreign body is
similar to the food materials because some reconstructed images can-
not distinguish them. Hence, the use of artificial intelligent system
(e.g., neural network and neuro-fuzzy) could be utilized to classify the
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL. | 15 of 20

TA BL E 2 Applications of noninvasive techniques for detecting foreign bodies

Mode Food products Foreign bodies References

X-ray Loaf of bread, a hamburger
steak, nd cabbage
Chili soup
Instant ramen, macaroni,
and spaghetti
Fish fillets
Minced meat, cultured
sour cream product
Food jar
Bakery product and
powder seasoning
Milk powder, minced meat
Cheese, minced milk,
wheat bread
Steel screws, aluminum rivets, (Morita et al., 2003)
staples, aluminum foil, glass and
plastic fragments
Metals and bone fragments (Chen et al., 2005)
Stainless steel, Teflon, aluminum, (Kwon et al., 2008)
rubber, glass, and ceramics
Bones (Mery et al., 2011)
Glass, paper, a ladybug, a cigarette (Nielsen et al., 2013)
butt, and a fly
Glass fragments (Lu & Peng, 2013)
Glass fragment and metal particles (Niemeyer, 2015)
Polyethylene plastic, hay powder, (Li et al., 2015)
and hollow cylinder
Glass, metal, wood, insects, plastic,
ttir et al., 2016)
(Einarsdo
rubber, and stones

Thermal Imaging Raisins, nuts, almonds Wooden sticks and stones
Raisins, almonds, nuts Wooden sticks, stone, metal, and
cardboard
Chocolate bar Stone, plastic, and glass fragments
Biscuits Stone, glass, plastic, wood, paper,
and textile fiber
(Meinlschmidt & Maergner, 2002)
(Ginesu, Giusto, Märgner, &
Meinlschmidt, 2004)
(Bukowska-Belniak, Le
sniak,
Kiełkowski, & Michalski, 2010)
(Senni et al., 2014)

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy
Blueberries Leaves, twigs, and stones (Tsuta et al., 2006)
Dough, cheese, doughnut, meat Coin, glass ball, and rubber (Pallav, Diamond, et al., 2009)
Blueberries Leaves and stems (Sugiyama et al., 2010)
Ham slice and chocolate Hairs and insects (Tashima et al., 2013)
Ham slice, fish, and chicken Wooden sticks and bones (Phetchalern et al., 2014)
wing sticks
Shell and pulp Walnut (Jiang et al., 2007)
Chicken breast fillets Bone fragments (Yoon et al., 2008)
Semolina Insect fragments (Bhuvaneswari et al., 2011)
Pork steaks Polyethylene terephthalate, poly-

(Díaz, Cervera, Fenollosa, Avila, &
ethylene, metal, insects, and bone Belenguer, 2011)

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) Grains Plastic shards, glass beads, and (Gowen & O’Donnell, 2013)
rubber fragments

Ultrasonic Marmalade and cheese product Bone, glass, steel, and wood (Hæeggstro € m & Luukkala, 2001)
Bottled beverages Metal, glass, and plastic pieces (Zhao et al., 2003)
Bottled beverages Glass fragment (Zhao et al., 2006)
Deboned chicken Bone fragment (Correia et al., 2008)
Cheese Plastic pieces (Leemans & Destain, 2009)
Canned food Rock and aluminum plate (Meftah & Mohd Azimin, 2012)
Cheese and poultry product Metal rod, metal, and glass fragment (Cho & Irudayaraj, 2003)
Canned beverages Copper and aluminum rods (Ho et al., 2007)
Cheese Wood, rubber, and glass (Pallav, Hutchins, & Gan, 2009)

Terahertz Chocolate Stone, glass, and plastic fragments € rdens & Koch, 2008)
(Jo
Flour sample Aluminum foil, metallic cubes, cubic (Kim et al., 2012)
stones, grasshopper, and
mealworms
Noodle Aluminium, granite, and insects (Lee et al., 2012)
Crackers product Dried fish and metal fragment (Han et al., 2012)
Instant noodles Crickets species (Ok et al., 2012)
Powdered milk Insect, polymer, and metals (Ok et al., 2014)
Powdered milk Metal razor and rubber fragments (Lee & Lee, 2014)
Powder Teflon and Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) (Ikari et al., 2014)
Chocolate product Caterpillar (Yu et al., 2015)

foreign body based on the reconstructed images. The combination of techniques. For example, the combination of conventional X-ray and
noninvasive techniques could be yield an interesting output as one terahertz technique. Conventional X-ray has limitation in imaging and
technique could overcome the limitations inherent in other analysis the low-density materials such as rubber and plastic.
16 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.

TA BL E 3 The advantages and disadvantages of sensor techniques for detecting foreign bodies in food

Sensor type Sensor principle Advantages Disadvantages

X-ray Electromagnetic  Nondestructive measurement  High cost

radiation  High imaging resolution.  High power usage

Thermal imaging Thermal emission  Noncontact measurement  Temperature interference

 No harmful radiation from other surfaces
 Able to operates in real-time

Near-infrared (NIR) Optical absorption  Nonionizing technique  Depends on reference methods

spectroscopy and reflection  Able to penetrate through air for calibration purpose
gaps within the food materials

Hyperspectral Optical absorption  Provide spatial and spectral information.  Requires a lengthy time for pre-processing
imaging (HSI) and reflection  Sensitive to minor components. of the data and classification

Ultrasonic Sound waves transmission,  Nondestructive technique  Limited to a single point measurement
reflection and refraction  Fast response  Not appropriate in air medium
 Able to perform high-velocity measurement

Terahertz Electromagnetic radiation  Low photon energy  Highly attenuated in water medium
 Able to penetrate various materials  Limited spatial resolution
 Low signal-to-noise ratio

Therefore, the combination with terahertz; a method which is recog- which will be the significant trend in its future application in food safety
nized that can penetrate various materials could be great innovation and quality aspect.
and contribution in foreign body detection system. Developing a low
cost noninvasive technique also is very important issue in food safety
ACK NOWLE DGME NT
and quality area as the current cost for commercialize of noninvasive
The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Minis-
with imaging technique is still very high.
try of Higher Education Malaysia under the MyBrain15 program and
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia for providing the research grants
4 | CONCLUSIONS
15H85 and 4J255 which enabled this research to be carried out.

This review summarized the applications of noninvasive techniques for

detecting foreign bodies in food products which included X-ray, thermal CON FLICT OF INT E RE ST
imaging, near-infrared spectroscopy, hyperspectral imaging, ultrasonic, The authors hereby declare that they have no conflict of interest.
and terahertz. The sources of contamination of food in production stages
are also outlined and encompassed in this article. It was revealed that
ORC ID
these noninvasive techniques had the capability to inspect the presence
of foreign bodies in several types of foods. Several types of foreign Mohd Taufiq Mohd Khairi http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0908-141X

bodies also been investigated to recognize the performances and limita-

tions of the techniques. In addition, advantages and disadvantages of
each noninvasive methods were also presented. In general, the use of
certain inspection technology is related to the characteristics of the food
and the specific purpose of the inspection. The sensors should be
selected based on suitability such as cost, hardware size, risk, detection
capability, and environmental situation. The sensors which have been
reviewed in this article are widely used for real time processing applica-
tions. Understanding the best way to evaluate food product is important
to the food manufacturer. In fact, the selection of sensor technique for
foreign bodies detection is highly reliant on the type of food that they
produced. Techniques such as NIR, hyperspectral, and thermal imaging
are suited to distinguish between food (e.g., fruits, cereals, and meats)
and foreign body through the external attributes such as color recogni-
tion and physical size. Conversely, X-rays, ultrasound, and terahertz are
more appropriate to observe the internal attributes of the food by
exploiting the high penetration capabilities of these techniques. Some
criteria are essentially being considered; (1) speed of system, (2) foreign
body classification, (3) combination technique, and (4) low-cost system
R EFE R ENC E S
Abbas, S., Hayat, K., Karangwa, E., Bashari, M., & Zhang, X. (2013). An
overview of ultrasound-assisted food-grade nanoemulsions. Food
Engineering Reviews, 5(3), 139–157.

, A., Ch
avez, J. A., García,
Alava, J. M., Sahi, S. S., García-Alvarez, J., Turo
M. J., & Salazar, J. (2007). Use of ultrasound for the determination of
flour quality. Ultrasonics, 46(3), 270–276.
Amon, F., Hamins, A., Bryner, N., & Rowe, J. (2008). Meaningful perform-
ance evaluation conditions for fire service thermal imaging cameras.
Fire Safety Journal, 43(8), 541–550.
Ashley, B. C., Birchfield, P. T., Chamberlain, B. V., Kotwal, R. S., McClel-
lan, S. F., Moynihan, S., . . . Au, W. W. (2004). Health concerns
regarding consumption of irradiated food. International Journal of
Hygiene and Environmental Health, 207(6), 493–504.
Awad, T. S., Moharram, H. A., Shaltout, O. E., Asker, D., & Youssef, M. M.
(2012). Applications of ultrasound in analysis, processing and quality
control of food: A review. Food Research International, 48(2), 410–427.
Bandyopadhyay, O., Biswas, A., & Bhattacharya, B. B. (2016). Long-bone
fracture detection in digital X-ray images based on digital-geometric
techniques. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, 123, 2–14.
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.
Bansal, S., Singh, A., Mangal, M., Mangal, A. K., & Kumar, S. (2017). Food
adulteration: Sources, health risks, and detection methods. Critical
Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 57(6), 1174–1189.
Baranowski, P., Mazurek, W., Wozniak, J., & Majewska, U. (2012). Detec-
tion of early bruises in apples using hyperspectral data and thermal
imaging. Journal of Food Engineering, 110(3), 345–355.
Bhaskaracharya, R. K., Kentish, S., & Ashokkumar, M. (2009). Selected
applications of ultrasonics in food processing. Food Engineering
Reviews, 1(1), 31–49.
Bhuvaneswari, K., Fields, P. G., White, N. D. G., Sarkar, A. K., Singh, C.
B., & Jayas, D. S. (2011). Image analysis for detecting insect frag-
ments in semolina. Journal of Stored Products Research, 47(1), 20–24.
Bukowska-Belniak, B., Le
sniak, A., Kiełkowski, P., & Michalski, R. (2010).
Detection of foreign bodies in comestible product using sequence of
low contrast thermographic images. Paper present at the Proceedings
of the 10th International Conference on Quantitative InfraRed Ther-
mography (pp. 475–480), Quebec City, Canada.
Butz, P., Hofmann, C., & Tauscher, B. (2006). Recent developments in
noninvasive techniques for fresh fruit and vegetables internal quality
analysis. Journal of Food Science, 70(9), R131–R141.
Chandrapala, J., & Leong, T. (2015). Ultrasonic processing for dairy appli-
cations: Recent advances. Food Engineering Reviews, 7(2), 143–158.
Chandrapala, J., Oliver, C., Kentish, S., & Ashokkumar, M. (2012a). Ultra-
sonics in food processing. Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, 19(5), 975–983.
Chandrapala, J., Oliver, C., Kentish, S., & Ashokkumar, M. (2012b). Ultra-
sonics in food processing – Food quality assurance and food safety.
Trends in Food Science & Technology, 26(2), 88–98.
Chemat, F., Zill-e-Huma., & Khan, M. K. (2011). Applications of ultra-
sound in food technology: Processing, preservation and extraction.
Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, 18, 813–835.
Chen, X., Jing, H., Tao, Y., & Cheng, X. (2005). Real-time image analysis
for nondestructive detection of metal sliver in packed food. Proceed-
ings of SPIE, 5996, 120–129.
Chen, Q., Zhang, C., Zhao, J., & Ouyang, Q. (2013). Recent advances in
emerging imaging techniques for non-destructive detection of food
quality and safety. Trends in Analytical Chemistry, 52, 261–274.
Cho, B. K., & Irudayaraj, J. M. K. (2003). Foreign object and internal dis-
order detection in food materials using noncontact ultrasound imag-
ing. Journal of Food Science, 68(3), 967–974.
Chua, H. S., Obradovic, J., Haigh, A. D., Upadhya, P. C., Hirsch, O.,
Crawley, D., . . . Linfield, E. H. (2005). Terahertz time-domain spectros-
copy of crushed wheat grain. Paper presented at the IEEE MTT-S
International Microwave Symposium Digest (pp. 1–4), Long Beach, CA.
Correia, L. R., Mittal, G. S., & Basir, O. A. (2008). Ultrasonic detection of
bone fragment in mechanically deboned chicken breasts. Innovative
Food Science and Emerging Technologies, 9(1), 109–115.
Debastiani, R., Simon, R., Batchelor, D., Dellagustin, G., Baumbach, T., &
Fiederle, M. (2016). Synchrotron-based scanning macro-X-ray fluores-
cence applied to fragments of Roman mural paintings. Microchemical
Journal, 126, 438–445.


Díaz, R., Cervera, L., Fenollosa, S., Avila, C., & Belenguer, J. (2011).
Hyperspectral system for the detection of foreign bodies in meat
products. Paper presented at the Procedia Engineering Eurosensors
XXV (pp. 313–316), Athens, Greece.
Edwards, M. (2004). Detecting foreign bodies in food. Cambridge, England:
Woodhead Publishing Limited.
Edwards, M. C., & Stringer, M. F. (2007). Observations on patterns in
foreign material investigations. Food Control, 18(7), 773–782.

ttir, H., Emerson, M. J., Clemmensen, L. H., Scherer, K., Willer,
Einarsdo
K., Bech, M., . . . Pfeiffer, F. (2016). Novelty detection of foreign
| 17 of 20
objects in food using multi-modal X-ray imaging. Food Control, 67,
39–47.
Elvira, L., Sampedro, L., Matesanz, J., Go
mez-Ullate, Y., Resa, P., Iglesias,
J. R., . . . de Espinosa, F. M. (2005). Non-invasive and non-destructive
ultrasonic technique for the detection of microbial contamination in
packed UHT milk. Food Research International, 38(6), 631–638.
FAO/IAEA/WHO. (1999). High-dose irradiation: Wholesomeness of food
irradiated with doses above 10 kGy. World Health Organization, 890,
1–197.
Freitas, S., Hielscher, G., Merkle, H. P., & Gander, B. (2006). Continuous
contact- and contamination-free ultrasonic emulsification - A useful
tool for pharmaceutical development and production. Ultrasonics
Sonochemistry, 13(1), 76–85.
Garboczi, E. J. (2002). Three-dimensional mathematical analysis of parti-
cle shape using X-ray tomography and spherical harmonics: Applica-
tion to aggregates used in concrete. Cement and Concrete Research,
32(10), 1621–1638.
Ginesu, G., Giusto, D. D., Märgner, V., & Meinlschmidt, P. (2004). Detec-
tion of foreign bodies in food by thermal image processing. IEEE
Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 51(2), 480–490.
Gorenflo, S., Tauer, U., Hinkov, I., Lambrecht, A., Buchner, R., & Helm, H.
(2006). Dielectric properties of oil-water complexes using terahertz
transmission spectroscopy. Chemical Physics Letters, 421(4–6), 494–498.
Gowen, A. A., & O’Donnell, C. P. (2013). Near infrared hyperspectral
imaging for foreign body detection and identification in food process-
ing. Spectroscopy Europe, 25, 6–11.
Gowen, A. A., O’Sullivan, C., & O’Donnell, C. P. (2012). Terahertz time
domain spectroscopy and imaging: Emerging techniques for food pro-
cess monitoring and quality control. Trends in Food Science and Tech-
nology, 25(1), 40–46.
Gowen, A. A., Tiwari, B. K., Cullen, P. J., McDonnell, K., & O’Donnell, C.
P. (2010). Applications of thermal imaging in food quality and safety
assessment. Trends in Food Science and Technology, 21(4), 190–200.
Graves, M., Smith, A., & Batchelor, B. (1998). Approaches to foreign body
detection in foods. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 9(1), 21–27.
Guillet, J. P., Recur, B., Frederique, L., Bousquet, B., Canioni, L., Manek-
Honninger, I., . . . Mounaix, P. (2014). Review of terahertz tomogra-
phy techniques. Journal of Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves,
35(4), 382–411.
€m, E., & Luukkala, M. (2001). Ultrasound detection and identifi-
Hæggstro
cation of foreign bodies in food products. Food Control, 12(1), 37–45.
Haff, R. P., & Toyofuku, N. (2008). X-ray detection of defects and con-
taminants in the food industry. Sensing and Instrumentation for Food
Quality and Safety, 2(4), 262–273.
Han, S. T., Park, W. K., Ahn, Y. H., Lee, W. J., & Chun, H. S. (2012).
Development of a compact sub-terahertz gyrotron and its application
to T-ray real-time imaging for food inspection. Paper presented at
the 37th International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Tera-
hertz Waves (pp. 6–7), Wollongong, Australia.
Hauptmann, P., Hoppe, N., & Puttmer, A. (2002). Application of ultra-
sonic sensors in the process industry. Measurement Science and Tech-
nology, 13(8), R73–R83.
Henning, B., & Rautenberg, J. (2006). Process monitoring using ultrasonic
sensor systems. Ultrasonics, 44, e1395–e1399.
Ho, K. S., Billson, D. R., & Hutchins, D. A. (2007). Inspection of drinks
cans using non-contact electromagnetic acoustic transducers. Journal
of Food Engineering, 80(2), 431–444.
Huang, M., Kim, M. S., Chao, K., Qin, J., Mo, C., Esquerre, C., . . . Zhu, Q.
(2016). Penetration depth measurement of near-infrared hyperspec-
tral imaging light for milk powder. Sensors, 16(4), 441–411.
18 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI
Huang, H., Liu, L., & Ngadi, M. O. (2014). Recent developments in hyper-
spectral imaging for assessment of food quality and safety. Sensors,
14(4), 7248–7276.
Hyman, F. N., Klontz, K. C., & Tollefson, L. (1993). Food and drug admin-
istration surveillance of the role of foreign objects in foodborne inju-
ries. Public Health Reports, 108, 54–59.
Ikari, T., Takahashi, N., Fukasawa, R., & Duling, I. (2014). Non-metallic
foreign matter detection in powder using terahertz pulse. Paper pre-
sented at the 39th International Conference on Infrared, Millimeter,
and Terahertz waves (pp. 1–2), Tucson, AZ.
James, B. (2005). Foreign body contamination of food - Scanning elec-
tron microscopy and energy dispersive spectroscopy as tools for
identification. International Journal of Food Engineering, 1, 1–15.
Jepsen, P. U., Møller, U., & Merbold, H. (2007). Investigation of aqueous
alcohol and sugar solutions with reflection terahertz time-domain
spectroscopy. Optics Express, 15(22), 14717–14737.
Jha, S. N., Narsaiah, K., Basediya, A. L., Sharma, R., Jaiswal, P., Kumar,
R., & Bhardwaj, R. (2011). Measurement techniques and application
of electrical properties for nondestructive quality evaluation of
foods - A review. Journal of Food Science and Technology, 48(4),
387–411.
Jiang, L., Zhu, B., Rao, X., Berney, G., & Tao, Y. (2007). Discrimination of
black walnut shell and pulp in hyperspectral fluorescence imagery
using Gaussian kernel function approach. Journal of Food Engineering,
81(1), 108–117.
Jiusheng, L. (2010). Optical parameters of vegetable oil studied by tera-
hertz time-domain spectroscopy. Applied Spectroscopy, 64(2), 231–
234.
€ rdens, C., & Koch, M. (2008). Detection of foreign bodies in chocolate
Jo
with pulsed terahertz spectroscopy. Optical Engineering, 47(3),
037003.
Kamruzzaman, M., Elmasry, G., Sun, D. W., & Allen, P. (2011). Application
of NIR hyperspectral imaging for discrimination of lamb muscles.
Journal of Food Engineering, 104(3), 332–340.
Kateb, B., Yamamoto, V., Yu, C., Grundfest, W., & Gruen, J. P. (2009).
Infrared thermal imaging: A review of the literature and case report.
NeuroImage, 47, T154–T162.
Kentish, S., & Feng, H. (2014). Applications of power ultrasound in food
processing. Annual Review of Food Science and Technology, 5(1), 263–
284.
Kim, G. J., Kim, J.-I., Jeon, S.-G., Kim, J., Park, K.-K., & Oh, C.-H. (2012).
Enhanced continuous-wave terahertz imaging with a horn antenna
for food inspection. Journal of Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz
Waves, 33(6), 657–664.
Kim, K.-B., Lee, S., Kim, M.-S., & Cho, B.-K. (2009). Determination of
apple firmness by nondestructive ultrasonic measurement. Postharv-
est Biology and Technology, 52(1), 44–48.
Knorr, D., Zenker, M., Heinz, V., & Lee, D.-U. (2004). Applications and
potential of ultrasonics in food processing. Trends in Food Science &
Technology, 15(5), 261–266.
Kong, W., Zhang, C., Liu, F., Nie, P., & He, Y. (2013). Rice seed cultivar
identification using near-infrared hyperspectral imaging and multivari-
ate data analysis. Sensors, 13(7), 8916–8927.
Kuzy, J., & Li, C. (2017). A pulsed thermographic imaging system for
detection and identification of cotton foreign matter. Sensors, 17(3),
518–515.
Kwon, J. S., Lee, J. M., & Kim, W. Y. (2008). Real-time detection of for-
eign objects using x-ray imaging for dry food manufacturing line.
Paper presented at the Proceedings of the International Symposium
on Consumer Electronics (pp. 1–4), Vilamoura, Portugal.
ET AL.
Lahiri, B. B., Bagavathiappan, S., Jayakumar, T., & Philip, J. (2012). Medi-
cal applications of infrared thermography: A review. Infrared Physics
and Technology, 55(4), 221–235.
Lee, Y.-K., Choi, S.-W., Han, S.-T., Woo, D. H., & Chun, H. S. (2012).
Detection of foreign bodies in foods using continuous wave terahertz
imaging. Journal of Food Protection, 75(1), 179–183.
Lee, W.-H., & Lee, W. (2014). Food inspection system using terahertz
imaging. Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, 56(5), 1211–1214.
Leemans, V., & Destain, M.-F. (2009). Ultrasonic internal defect detection
in cheese. Journal of Food Engineering, 90(3), 333–340.
Leong, T. S. H., Wooster, T. J., Kentish, S. E., & Ashokkumar, M. (2009).
Minimising oil droplet size using ultrasonic emulsification. Ultrasonics
Sonochemistry, 16(6), 721–727.
Lewis, D. F. (1993). A tutorial and comprehensive bibliography on the identi-
fication of foreign bodies found in food. Food Structure, 12(3), 365–378.
Li, F., Liu, Z., Sun, T., Ma, Y., & Ding, X. (2015). Confocal three-
dimensional micro X-ray scatter imaging for non-destructive detect-
ing foreign bodies with low density and low-Z materials in food prod-
ucts. Food Control, 54, 120–125.
Li, J. L., Sun, D. W., & Cheng, J. H. (2016). Recent advances in nondes-
tructive analytical techniques for determining the total soluble solids
in fruits: A review. Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food
Safety, 15(5), 897–911.
Lim, K. S., & Barigou, M. (2004). X-ray micro-computed tomography of cel-
lular food products. Food Research International, 37(10), 1001–1012.
Liu, Y., Pu, H., & Sun, D.-W. (2017). Hyperspectral imaging technique for
evaluating food quality and safety during various processes: A review
of recent applications. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 69, 25.
Lu, Z., & Peng, N. (2013). Dual view x-ray inspection system for foreign
objects detection in canned food. Paper presented at the Proceedings
of SPIE 8788, Optical Measurement Systems for Industrial Inspection
VIII (pp. 1–9), Munich, Germany.
Mangus, D. L., Sharda, A., & Zhang, N. (2016). Development and evalua-
tion of thermal infrared imaging system for high spatial and temporal
resolution crop water stress monitoring of corn within a greenhouse.
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 121, 149–159.
Manley, M. (2014). Near-infrared spectroscopy and hyperspectral imag-
ing: Non-destructive analysis of biological materials. Chemical Society
Reviews, 43(24), 8200–8214.
Marsh, R. A., & Angold, R. E. (2004). Identifying potential sources of for-
eign bodies in the supply chain. In M. C. Edwards (Ed.), Detecting for-
eign bodies in food (pp. 3–13). Cambridge, England: Woodhead
Publishing Limited.
Mathiassen, J. R., Misimi, E., Bondø, M., Veliyulin, E., & Østvik, S. O. (2011).
Trends in application of imaging technologies to inspection of fish and
fish products. Trends in Food Science and Technology, 22(6), 257–275.
Mcclements, D. J., & Sundaram, G. (1997). Ultrasonic characterization of
foods and drinks: Principles, methods and applications. Critical
Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 37(1), 1–46.
McClure, W. F., Moody, D., Stanfield, D. L., & Kinoshita, O. (2002).
Hand-held NIR Spectrometry. Part II: An economical no-moving parts
spectrometer for measuring chlorophyll and moisture. Applied Spec-
troscopy, 56(6), 720–724.
Meftah, H., & Mohd Azimin, E. (2012). Detection of foreign bodies in
canned foods using ultrasonic testing. International Food Research
Journal, 19, 543–546.
Meinel, F. G., Schwab, F., Yaroshenko, A., Velroyen, A., Bech, M., Hell-
bach, K., . . . Nikolaou, K. (2014). Lung tumors on multimodal radio-
graphs derived from grating-based X-ray imaging - A feasibility study.
Physica Medica, 30(3), 352–357.
MOHD KHAIRI ET AL.
Meinlschmidt, P., & Maergner, V. (2002). Detection of foreign substances
in food using thermography. Paper presented at the Proceedings of
SPIE 4710, Thermosense XXIV (pp. 565–571), Bellingham, WA.
Mery, D., Lillo, I., Loebel, H., Riffo, V., Soto, A., Cipriano, A., & Aguilera,
J. M. (2011). Automated fish bone detection using X-ray imaging.
Journal of Food Engineering, 105(3), 485–492.
Moghaddam, T. M., Razavi, S. M. A., & Taghizadeh, M. (2013). Applica-
tions of hyperspectral imaging in grains and nuts quality and safety
assessment: A review. Journal of Food Measurement and Characteriza-
tion, 7(3), 129–140.
Mohammadi, V., Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti, M., Ebrahimi, R., & Abbasvali,
M. (2014). Ultrasonic techniques for the milk production industry.
Measurement, 58, 93–102.
Mongenot, N., Charrier, S., & Chalier, P. (2000). Effect of ultrasound
emulsification on cheese aroma encapsulation by carbohydrates. Jour-
nal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 48(3), 861–867.
Morita, K., Ogawa, Y., Thai, C. N., & Tanaka, F. (2003). Soft X-ray image
analysis to detect foreign materials in foods. Food Science and Tech-
nology Research, 9(2), 137–141.
Morrison, D. S., & Abeyratne, U. R. (2014). Ultrasonic technique for non-
destructive quality evaluation of oranges. Journal of Food Engineering,
141, 107–112.
Mousavi, R., Miri, T., Cox, P. W., & Fryer, P. J. (2005). A novel technique
for ice crystal visualization in frozen solids using X-ray micro-com-
puted tomography. Journal of Food Science, 70(7), e437–e442.
Nicolaï, B. M., Defraeye, T., Ketelaere, B., De, Herremans, E., Hertog, M.
L. A. T. M., Saeys, W., . . . Verboven, P. (2014). Nondestructive mea-
surement of fruit and vegetable quality. Annual Review of Food Sci-
ence and Technology, 5(1), 285–312.
Nielsen, M. S., Lauridsen, T., Christensen, L. B., & Feidenhans’l, R. (2013).
X-ray dark-field imaging for detection of foreign bodies in food. Food
Control, 30(2), 531–535.
Niemeyer, W. D. (2015). SEM/EDS analysis for problem solving in the
food industry. Paper presented at the Proceedings of SPIE 9636,
Scanning Microscopies (pp. 1–9), California, CA.
Ok, G., Choi, S. W., Park, K. H., & Chun, H. S. (2012). Foreign object
detection by sub-terahertz quasi-Bessel beam imaging. Sensors, 13(1),
71–85.
Ok, G., Kim, H. J., Chun, H. S., & Choi, S. W. (2014). Foreign-body detec-
tion in dry food using continuous sub-terahertz wave imaging. Food
Control, 42, 284–289.
Olsen, A. R. (1998). Regulatory action criteria for filth and other extraneous
materials. I. Review of hard or sharp foreign objects as physical hazards
in food. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, 28(3), 181–189.
Orina, I., Manley, M., & Williams, P. J. (2017). Non-destructive techni-
ques for the detection of fungal infection in cereal grains. Food
Research International, 100, 74–86.
Osborne, B., Fearn, T., & Hindle, P. (1993). Practical NIR spectroscopy
with applications in food and beverage analysis (2nd ed.). London, Eng-
land: Longman Scientific & Technical.
Pallav, P., Diamond, G. G., Hutchins, D. A., Green, R. J., & Gan, T. H.
(2009). A near-infrared (NIR) technique for imaging food materials.
Journal of Food Science, 74(1), E23–E33.
Pallav, P., Hutchins, D. A., & Gan, T. H. (2009). Air-coupled ultrasonic
evaluation of food materials. Ultrasonics, 49(2), 244–253.
Parasoglou, P., Parrott, E. P. J., Zeitler, J. A., Rasburn, J., Powell, H., Glad-
den, L. F., & Johns, M. L. (2009). Quantitative moisture content
detection in food wafers. Paper presented at the 34th International
Conference on Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz Waves (pp. 1–2),
Busan, Korea.
| 19 of 20
Peariso, D. (2006). Preventing foreign material contamination of foods.
Iowa, IA: Blackwell Publishing.
Phetchalern, S., Tashima, H., Ishii, Y., Ishiyama, T., Arai, S., & Fukuda, M.
(2014). Near-infrared imaging equipment that detects small organic
substances in thick foods. Paper presented at the Proceedings of
SPIE Current Developments in Lens Design and Optical Engineering
XV (pp. 1–6), California, CA.
Qin, J., Ying, Y., & Xie, L. (2013). The detection of agricultural products
and food using terahertz spectroscopy: A review. Applied Spectros-
copy Reviews, 48(6), 439–457.

s, E., García-Reguero,
Redo-Sanchez, A., Salvatella, G., Galceran, R., Roldo
J.-A., Castellari, M., & Tejada, J. (2011). Assessment of terahertz
spectroscopy to detect antibiotic residues in food and feed matrices.
The Analyst, 136(8), 1733–1738.

, A., Ch

Salazar, J., Turo avez, J. A., & García, M. J. (2004). Ultrasonic
inspection of batters for on-line process monitoring. Ultrasonics, 42
(1–9), 155–159.
Schoeman, L., Williams, P., Plessis, A., & Du Manley, M. (2016). X-ray
micro-computed tomography (lCT) for non-destructive characterisa-
tion of food microstructure. Trends in Food Science and Technology,
47, 10–24.
Senni, L., Burrascano, P., & Ricci, M. (2016). Multispectral laser imaging
for advanced food analysis. Infrared Physics and Technology, 77, 179–
192.
Senni, L., Ricci, M., Palazzi, A., Burrascano, P., Pennisi, P., & Ghirelli, F.
(2014). On-line automatic detection of foreign bodies in biscuits by
infrared thermography and image processing. Journal of Food Engi-
neering, 128, 146–156.
Shanmugam, A., Chandrapala, J., & Ashokkumar, M. (2012). The effect of
ultrasound on the physical and functional properties of skim milk.
Innovative Food Science & Emerging Technologies, 16, 251–258.
Siche, R., Vejarano, R., Aredo, V., Velasquez, L., Saldana, E., & Quevedo,
R. (2016). Evaluation of food quality and safety with hyperspectral
imaging (HSI). Food Engineering Reviews, 8(3), 306–322.
Sigfusson, H., Ziegler, G. R., & Coupland, J. N. (2004). Ultrasonic monitor-
ing of food freezing. Journal of Food Engineering, 62(3), 263–269.
Stajnko, D., Lakota, M., & Hočevar, M. (2004). Estimation of number and
diameter of apple fruits in an orchard during the growing season by
thermal imaging. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 42(1), 31–42.
Stringer, M. F., & Hall, M. N. (2007). A generic model of the integrated
food supply chain to aid the investigation of food safety breakdowns.
Food Control, 18(7), 755–765.
Sugiyama, T., Sugiyama, J., Tsuta, M., Fujita, K., Shibata, M., Kokawa, M.,
. . . Sagara, Y. (2010). NIR spectral imaging with discriminant analysis
for detecting foreign materials among blueberries. Journal of Food
Engineering, 101(3), 244–252.
Sun, T., Liu, Z., Wang, G., Ma, Y., Peng, S., Sun, W., . . . Ding, X. (2014). Appli-
cation of confocal X-ray fluorescence micro-spectroscopy to the inves-
tigation of paint layers. Applied Radiation and Isotopes, 94, 109–112.
Tashima, H., Genta, T., Ishii, Y., Ishiyama, T., Arai, S., & Fukuda, M.
(2013). Near-infrared imaging system for detecting small organic for-
eign substances in foods. Paper presented at the Proceedings of SPIE
8841, Current Developments in Lens Design and Optical Engineering
XIV (pp. 1–8), California, CA.
Tauxe, R. V. (2001). Food safety and irradiation: Protecting the public
from foodborne infections. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 7(7), 516–
521.
Trafialek, J., Kaczmarek, S., & Kolanowski, W. (2016). The risk analysis of
metallic foreign bodies in food product. Journal of Food Quality, 0, 1–
10.
20 of 20 | MOHD KHAIRI
Tsuta, M., Takao, T., Sugiyama, J., Wada, Y., & Sagara, Y. (2006). Foreign
substance detection in blueberry fruits by spectral imaging. Food Sci-
ence and Technology Research, 12(2), 96–100.
Vadivambal, R., & Jayas, D. S. (2011). Applications of thermal imaging in
agriculture and food industry - A review. Food and Bioprocess Tech-
nology, 4(2), 186–199.
Wang, L. B., Frost, J. D., Voyiadjis, G. Z., & Harman, T. P. (2003). Quanti-
fication of damage parameters using X-ray tomography images.
Mechanics of Materials, 35(8), 777–790.
Wang, W., & Paliwal, J. (2007). Near-infrared spectroscopy and imaging
in food quality and safety. Sensing and Instrumentation for Food Qual-
ity and Safety, 1(4), 193–207.
Woh, P. Y., Thong, K. L., Behnke, J. M., Lewis, J. W., & Mohd Zain, S. N.
(2016). Evaluation of basic knowledge on food safety and food han-
dling practices amongst migrant food handlers in Peninsular Malaysia.
Food Control, 70, 64–73.
Xiong, Z., Sun, D.-W., Zeng, X.-A., & Xie, A. (2014). Recent developments
of hyperspectral imaging systems and their applications in detecting
quality attributes of red meats: A review. Journal of Food Engineering,
132, 1–13.
Yoon, S. C., Lawrence, K. C., Smith, D. P., Park, B., & Windham, W. R.
(2008). Bone fragment detection in chicken breast fillets using trans-
mittance image enhancement. Transactions of the American Society of
Agricultural and Biological Engineers, 51, 331–339.
View publication stats
ET AL.
Yu, X., Endo, M., Ishibashi, T., Shimizu, M., Kusanagi, S., Nozokido, T., &
Bae, J. (2015). Orthogonally polarized terahertz wave imaging with
real-time capability for food inspection. Paper presented at the Asia-
Pacific Microwave Conference (pp. 1–3), Nanjing, China.
Yuefang, H., & Hongjian, Z. (2010). Qualitative and quantitative detection
of pesticides with terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. IEEE Transac-
tions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 58, 2064–2070.
Zhao, B., Basir, O. A., & Mittal, G. S. (2003). Detection of metal, glass
and plastic pieces in bottled beverages using ultrasound. Food
Research International, 36(5), 513–521.
Zhao, B., Yang, P., Basir, O. A., & Mittal, G. S. (2006). Ultrasound based
glass fragments detection in glass containers filled with beverages
using neural networks and short time Fourier transform. Food
Research International, 39(6), 686–695.
Zheng, L., & Sun, D.-W. (2006). Innovative applications of power ultra-
sound during food freezing processes - A review. Trends in Food Sci-
ence & Technology, 17(1), 16–23.
How to cite this article: Mohd Khairi MT, Ibrahim S, Md Yunus
MA, Faramarzi M. Noninvasive techniques for detection of for-
eign bodies in food: A review. J Food Process Eng. 2018;e12808.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jfpe.12808