Miller Magazine Issue: 155 November 2022

78 COVER STORY MILLER / NOVEMBER 2022 IMAGE ANALYSIS Physical characteristics of seeds are important quality pa- rameter for the milling industry. The presence of blacktip and blackpoint on wheat and barley affect the quality of flour and malt. Fungal stains, black, red and green streaks in rice effect the quality of the milled rice. Broken grains, chipped grains, white spots, chalkiness etc are all parameters that affect the quality of the final milled product. Since these parameters are visual effects rather than chemical defects, then NIR and UV sensors cannot measure them. The human eye and brain can make these measurements, however Image Analysis provides a rapid measurement tool which can be more cost effective and consistent than humans. Image analysis is based on collecting a visual scan or image of the seeds and then applying computer based algorithms to measure a wide range of physical parameters, including, length, width, thickness, broken seeds, chipped seeds, co- lour, colour defects, fungal stains, chalkiness, yellow berry, and many other parameters that are calculated from these primary measurements. Figure 5 shows an image collected for wheat placed on a tray using the SeedCount SC6000 Image Analyser. The SeedCount software measures 12 parameters in approximately 45 seconds as shown in the picture. The SeedCount has sev- eral application modules including long grain rice, medium and arborio rice, wheat, barley, durum, canola, sorghum, corn, and coffee. Each module requires different sample trays and measures different parameters. An Italian company, SCE s.r.l, offers an appli- cation module for SeedCount called Specktek which detects black specks in fluor and sem- olina. The flour or semolina is spread out on a SeedCount tray an inserted into the Seed- Count scanner. N image is collected and the Specktek software detects black specks and displays the data on the SeedCount screen. Figure 6 shows a typical Specktek analysis. The Branscan Flouroscan is also an image analyser that is designed for powered materials such as flour and semolina. The Flouroscan mea- sures the quality of the milling pro- cess by detecting the number and size of aleurone and bran particles in the flour or semolina. Satake and Kett Instruments of- fer specialised rice image analysis systems that measure whiteness index which is used to evaluate the milling process. Other image analysers include the EyeFoss (Foss, Denmark), MARVI- TECH (Germany), Vibe Q3mi (VIBE, USA). Discussion There are tens of thousands of milling operations around the world. There are hundreds of laboratories and in line analy- sers available for millers, however there is no one size fits all solutions. Millers in the main do not have the experience in measurement systems to be able to determine the suitability of an analyser for their operation. Evaluating each analyser is an expensive process and not guaranteed to provide a positive result. The flour mill that installed the CropScan 3000S In Line analyser evaluated 4 systems of which three were supplied by leading brand name companies. The miller’s criteria included reliability, serviceability, accuracy and cost. The final scorecard showed that even though the CropScan was the lowest cost analyser, it out-performed the other analysers on most of their criteria. It goes to show that big brand names do not always provide the best solution. Figure 5 Screen shot SeedCount analysis of wheat. Figure 6 Spektec screen shot