Intelligent Evaluation of the Appearance Modality of Black Tea Based on Machine Vision and Hyperspectral Imaging

The appearance of tea leaves is the most intuitive factor in assessing their quality and is an important indicator of the price. The study utilizes machine vision and hyperspectral image technology to develop a rapid method for assessing the appearance quality of seven grades of Dianhong Congou black tea samples based on shape, color, texture, and feature fusion. Using the shape metrics of length, width, perimeter, narrowness, area, and rectangularity, 88 texture values, and nine color values as features, the effectiveness of intelligent recognition algorithms such as support vector machine, random forest, and least squares support vector machine (LSSVM) in classifying single features (shape, color, and texture) and fused data models of the categories of Dianhong tea samples was explored. The results showed that the accuracy of the feature fusion-based appearance quality evaluation models was all higher than the modeling results of the corresponding single features, and the accuracy of the LSSVM model based on the fused data was 100%. This study showed that feature data fusion reflects the external information of tea leaves more comprehensively and that intelligent classification algorithms combined with image analysis techniques were an effective strategy for the identification of regional black tea.