| Intramuscular fat (IMF) influences important quality characteristics of meat, such as flavor, juiciness, palatability, odor and tenderness. Thus, the objective of this study was to apply the following image processing techniques to quantify the IMF in beef: palette; sampling, interval of coordinates; black and white threshold; and discriminant function of colors. Thirty-five samples of beef, with a wide range of IMF, were used. Color images were taken of the meat samples from different muscles, with variability in the IMF content. The IMF of a thin cross-section meat was determined by chemical lipid extraction and was predicted by image analysis. The chemical method was compared with the image analysis. The segmentation procedures were validated by the... |
