Research progress of terahertz wave technology in food inspection

Food safety and quality concern have become more and more significant in recent years. There is therefore an increasing focus on new technologies that can be applied to food quality evaluation or safety inspection, either to simplify or speed up the checking process, or to provide additional functionality. For example, the technique of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy has been used for the authentication of agricultural products and food samples. Terahertz (THz) radiation, or THz wave, is electromagnetic wave lies between mid-infrared and microwave radiation. During the past decade, THz waves have been used to characterize the electronic, vibrational and compositional properties of solid, liquid and gas phase materials. The main two applications in which THz fields involved are THz spectroscopy and THz imaging. Terahertz wave technology, as a new area of research, has shown its wide prospects in imaging, diagnosis, detection, and monitoring, etc. Recently, THz technology has gained a lot of attention from biological spectral analysis to bio-medical imaging due to its unique features compared with microwave and optical waves. In this paper, a brief review is given to summarize the progress of THz techqiues in the field of food inspection. The properties of THz wave, its uniqueness in sensing and imaging applications, and the prospect of this novel technology in food industry were discussed.