In-Line Monitoring of Food Contamination via Microwave Imaging

Food quality earns a huge interest from food industry. In particular, the presence of small foreign fragments is generally the main issue in food quality control. While metal contaminants can be detected by means of metal detectors, the same does not happen for plastic or glass pieces. To overcome this limitation, the use of microwave imaging is proposed in this work. The goal is to develop a microwave system to be used along the production chain. To cope with this challenging scenario, in which the measurement time is reduced and only a limited amount of data is available, an imaging strategy taking advantage of the target's movement and of the expected small size of the sought contamination is developed. In this communication, the rationale of the approach is described and assessed in a simple, yet meaningful case.