Detection of woody breast condition in broiler breast fillets using light scattering imaging

Muscular myopathies such as woody or Wooden Breast (WB), which impair the eating quality and marketability of poultry products, are threatening the profitability of poultry industries worldwide, with an estimated annual loss exceeding $500 million for the United States (U.S.) poultry industry. WB-affected fillets are characterized by abnormal tissue hardness and muscle rigidity with varying degrees of severity. The assessment of WB conditions at processing facilities currently relies on tactile palpation combined with a visual examination by trained personnel. This approach is subjective, labor-intensive, costly, and may induce contamination due to physical contact. Optical imaging technology offers a promising alternative for objective and non-invasive quality assessment of broiler meat. This study presents a proof-of-concept evaluation of a new scattering imaging technique that captures light-scattering characteristics of meat tissues for the detection of WB conditions in broiler breast fillets. Broadband scattering images, generated under the illumination of a highly focused broadband beam, were acquired from broiler meat samples. Two types of image features, i.e., 1) deep-learning-based and 2) hand-crafted scattering features, were extracted for building classification models using regularized linear discriminant analysis to differentiate meat samples into two categories, i.e., “Normal (no WB)” and “Defective”, according to WB conditions. Deep-learning-based features yielded an overall classification accuracy of 80.9%, while an improved accuracy of 88.7% was obtained by hand-crafted scattering features, representing a significant improvement of 7.8% (P ⪅ 0.01). Furthermore, feature selection based on Minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance (MRMR) was conducted to select a subset of scattering image features for discriminant modeling, leading to a further accuracy improvement to 90.5% with top-ranked 65 features. This study has demonstrated the promise of the light scattering imaging technique for WB detection in broiler breast meats.