Experimental Investigation of Microwave Imaging as Means to Assess Fruit Quality

The continuous increase in global food consumption brings forward the need for constant development of technologies to enhance the existing quality assessment methods. Such enhancement can both increase the safety of the consumers and decrease the product wastage. In recent decades, microwave imaging has emerged as a promising non-invasive and non-ionizing technology for a range of applications. In this paper, the applicability of a newly developed microwave radar algorithm for fruit imaging is proposed. The measurements have been performed using purpose built hardware and the image reconstruction has been performed through a Huygens principle based algorithm. The variation in the dielectric properties of the fruits’ internal body allows the algorithm to detect and capture the contrast when reconstructing their internal field. Experimental results on lemons and grapefruits indicate the capability of the algorithm to both detect seeds inside the fruits and distinguish between seeded and seedless samples.