DisplayTitle

In the last decades, the analysis of gas cells size, shape and their distribution in the crumb of baked products is acquiring great interest to assess the effect of process, ingredients and additives without using invasive techniques. In doing that, it is necessary to capture the image of the cross-section and then to use an image software to binarize images applying an algorithm. Nevertheless, capturing settings and the definition of the algorithm require a careful selection to obtain reliable results of gas cells distribution when study bread crumbs. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of the capturing settings and algorithm type in the analysis of gas cells distribution (number of cells, total cells area and circularity) in both wheat and gluten free breads. Crumbs from gluten and non-gluten breads were scanned full scale using different pixel levels per inch (600 ppi-150 ppi) and captured in tiff format. A 50x50 mm square field of view was evaluated for each image. Images analyzed by Image J software showed that the pixels level used significantly affected the number of crumb cells, and the impact was larger when compactness of crumb increased, independently of the type of bread, with or without gluten. Pertaining to the algorithm, cells count and size from digital analysis was dependent on the type of algorithm applied. Even with close thresholds, differences were observed in the number of cells per square cm and total cells area, but barely divergence was exhibited by circularity. Therefore, image digital analysis of bread crumb can be useful for understanding crumb structure, but attention must be payed when selecting capturing settings and algorithm to reproduce the accurate pattern of the baked products and also for comparing purposes.