Senadeera, W.; Banks, J.; Adiletta, G.; Brewer, K. Microstructural Approach Application for Morphological Change Determinations of Grapes during Drying. Processes2024, 12, 720.
Senadeera, W.; Banks, J.; Adiletta, G.; Brewer, K. Microstructural Approach Application for Morphological Change Determinations of Grapes during Drying. Processes 2024, 12, 720.
Senadeera, W.; Banks, J.; Adiletta, G.; Brewer, K. Microstructural Approach Application for Morphological Change Determinations of Grapes during Drying. Processes2024, 12, 720.
Senadeera, W.; Banks, J.; Adiletta, G.; Brewer, K. Microstructural Approach Application for Morphological Change Determinations of Grapes during Drying. Processes 2024, 12, 720.
Abstract
Grape dehydration is practiced widely in the food industry with large yields of sultanas produced globally. This paper proposes an investigation into grape microstructure changes as it is dried by imaging specimens at intervals during dehydration at two temperatures using scanning electron microscopy. Detailed images of the microstructure were obtained, and a unique image processing algorithm was developed to quantitatively analyse the properties of this microstructure. Two main methods were developed to obtain the complex boundaries of cells present in the grape tissue in over 36 SEM images. Segmentation of the binary image using an adapted watershed function obtained the most consistent and accurate morphological shape. This was compared to a secondary method which used Canny’s edge detection function, morphological closing and skeletonizing to outlines the cellular microstructure. MATLAB was utilised to convert these boundaries into measurable areas so that quantitative data on average cell area, perimeter and cell axis lengths was acquired. It was found that over drying time cell area and perimeter reduced as expected. Some variability in the data was clear due to only single samples being analysed for each temperature and time combination. The development of automatic image processing techniques will enable quantitative data to be extracted from these images. Trends in cell perimeter, diameter and shape will be used to demonstrate relationships between morphological structure, drying temperature, and duration.
Keywords
Grape; drying; Micro-structure; SEM; Algorithm
Subject
Engineering, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
