X-ray detection of defects and contaminants in the food industry

The ability of X-rays to traverse through matter and reveal hidden contaminants or defects has led to their extensive use in manufacturing industries for quality control inspection. The difficulties inherent in the detection of defects and contaminants in food products have kept the use of X-ray in that industry limited mainly to the packaged foods sector. Nevertheless, the need for non-destructive internal product inspection has motivated a considerable research effort in this field spanning many decades. Improvements in technology, especially more compact and affordable high voltage power sources, high speed computing, and high resolution detector arrays, have made many X-ray detection tasks possible today that were previously unfeasible. These improvements can be expected to continue into the future. The purpose of this article is to give a review of research activity related to the use of X-ray imaging for the detection of defects and contaminants in agricultural commodities and discuss improvements in technology required to improve these detection capabilities. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008.