Spanish team applies MR imaging to quality control in the meat industry

Scientists at the University of Extremadura in Badajoz, Spain, have found another use for MR imaging—but it has nothing to do with medicine, the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology has announced.

In the Journal of Food Engineering, Trinidad Perez-Palacios, PhD, and co-authors detailed their method of using MRI to reveal the characteristics of pricey Iberian hams and loins without having to cut into them. 

“The technique allows knowing parameters such as the amount of fat, moisture, color and some sensory attributes of the product,” Perez-Palacios said in a release. “And, in the case of ham, also monitoring the salt diffusion during the different stages of the maturation process.”

Though MRI is typically used in a clinical setting to scan the human body, Perez-Palacios and colleagues used the same non-invasive technology to image full hams and loins. After the images are captured, the team analyzed them with computer vision algorithms and were able to extract numerical values that translated to different qualities of the meat.

Perez-Palacios said the novel approach could be a future alternative to the quality control measures currently taken by meat production companies. Most methods are destructive in nature, he said, which can be detrimental to the quality of Spanish ham—especially jambon Iberico, which goes for an average $220 per hand-sliced pound.

“We put at the disposal of the meat industry an effective method to obtain images of any meat piece—not only loins and hams—in a harmless and non-invasive way, allowing, in addition, its subsequent commercialization,” Perez-Palacios said. “Its implementation in the meat industry is only a matter of time.”

According to the release, the method has since been made available to the industry.