Real-time linescan x-ray equipment for high speed inspection and sorting of agricultural commodities

Current and past projects include: detection of watercore and insect infestation in apples, as well as research and development to improve image quality.

F-Scan airport style luggage inspection unit

Current and past projects include: detection of watercore and insect infestation in apples, watercore in pineapples, and agricultural quarantine materials in luggage, as well as research and development to improve image quality and sensor performance.

Real-time cabinet x-ray unit

Current and past projects include: olive fly infestation in olives, weevil infestation in wheat, pinholes in almonds.

Faxitron film x-ray cabinet

Generally used to collect preliminary high resolution film x-ray images for projects that will use real-time units.

Silverson Slurry Mixer, Large Commercial Size

This mixer was used for a study on the possible effect of  processing method on the measurement of aflatoxin in a lot sample of pistachios.  The two methods compared were: wet slurry processing (common in Europe) versus dry milling processing (common in the USA).

Acoustic Sorter for sorting open and closed shell pistachio nuts

Test model on top, production model below

Production Model
 

Traditional Color Sorter

Past projects include sorting processing streams to remove early split pistachio nuts (which have been shown to contain the bulk of aflatoxin contamination).

Low Cost Visible Light Sorter

This device is currently being patented and was developed to sort pistachio streams (and other granular commodities) at a fraction of the cost of more traditional methods.

Commercially available color sorting machine widely used in the food industry for both NIR and visible light sorting

Recently completed NIR-based project aimed  to improve the sorting capabilities of this machine, primarily by improvements to the optical components.

Spectrophotometer

Cary 500i (left) and Spex Fluorolog and Double Spectrometer (right)

Fluoroscope

Milton Roy Spectronic 1201

Laser Sorter

Past projects include detection of embedded shell fragments in almonds and insect damaged coffee beans.

Force Transducer

Developed to perform non-destructive detection of pits in prunes based on the signal generated by a force transducer as the product passes under a roller.

Algorithm Detection of Defects

This lab has developed several computer algorithms for detection of a variety of defects and features.  This includes detection of watercore in apples, detection of weevil infestation (internal damage) in individual grains of wheat, and some preliminary work for detection of agricultural contraband in x-rayed airport luggage.

Please see our Lab Publications section for our published papers on this subject.

Sampling Theory