Design and construction of a vision system for cheese quality evaluation

In the modern century, cheese plays a key role in many food factories. Over years, several methods of cheese quality evaluation have been devising, but unfortunately they are relying on the individual judgment of the tester. As a result, the lack of objectivity of the test methods motivates researchers and cheese-makers sought continuously to improve and maintain the quality of cheese. The purpose of this thesis is to design and construct a vision system to determine the melting characteristics of some commercial cheeses samples during heating, and ageing. In this research, Cheddar, Kashar and Mozzarella have been evaluated using a vision system which consists of an oven, a computer, a digital camera, a temperature controller, a data acquisition card, a thermal measurement system, a power supply, and a white tray. The principle work of the project has initiated with these tools. The oven temperature is controlled by PID controller. When the temperature of the oven is reached to the preset temperature, the sample is placed on the oven tray. The oven with top glass?s cover allows the camera which is placed out of the chamber to capture image during melting process. At a certain interval of time, the images are captured and analyzed by using the proposed image processing algorithm to determine the area of the melting cheese sample. Melting characteristics of the Cheddar, Kashar and Mozzarella cheeses are then presented and the results are discussed. It is worth to mention, the device has good ability to be applied on the other food studies.