A Simple Differential microwave Imaging Strategy for In-Line Inspection of food,

Recently, microwave imaging is gaining particular attention in food industry as an alternative diagnostic tool for the non-invasive inspection of food. To this end, a microwave system could be specifically devised to perform the imaging directly when the food item moves on the production line. In this work, a simple imaging strategy, specifically meant for the above system, enabling to detect the presence of possible foreign bodies in the food, and image them, is presented. The idea is to perform a differential imaging by exploiting the symmetries commonly characterizing the food products which are broken by the presence of foreign bodies, thus revealing their presence. A quite common case is that of homogeneous food packaged in circular plastic/glass jars. A simple 3D numerical example is provided, showing the effectiveness of the approach.