Principal Investigator: Dr Owen Falzon, Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics
Co-Investigator: Prof. Kenneth Camilleri, Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics
Co-Investigator: Prof. Vasilis Valdramidis, Department of Food Sciences and Nutrition
Technical Development: Dr Sholeem Griffin, Centre for Biomedical Cybernetics

Externally funded: MCST-TDP R&I-2015-048-T (2018 - 2020) EUR 143,881

In this project we are working on the development and application of an imaging system that provides a non-contact and non-destructive approach for the early detection of microbial contaminants that are responsible for food spoilage, with a focus on slowgrowing fungi in dairy products. The main hardware component of the system consists of a hyperspectral camera which can be used to acquire image sequences at different spectral bands. These images can be considered as a fingerprint that characterises the composition of the object being analysed. Through the automated processing and analysis of the hyperspectral data, this system would help identify the contaminated products and also assist in finding the environments in the processing facilities leading to post process contamination.

This project is financed by the Malta Council for Science & Technology, for and on behalf of the Foundation for Science and Technology, through the FUSION: R&I Technology Development Programme and is being carried out in collaboration with Farm Fresh Ltd.