Effect of frying temperature and time on image characterizations of pellet snacks

The development of non-destructive methods for the evaluation of food properties has important advantages for the food processing industries. So, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of frying temperature (150, 170, and 190 °C) and time (0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5 and 4.5 min) on image properties (L*, a* and b*, fractal dimension, correlation, entropy, contrast and homogeneity) of pellet snacks. Textures were computed separately for eight channels (RGB, R, G, B, U, V, H and S). Enhancing the frying time from 0.5 min to 2.5 min increased the fractal dimension; but its increase from 2.5 min to 4.5 min could not expand the samples. Then, the highest volume of pellet snacks was observed at 2.5 min. Features derived from the image texture contained better information than color features. The best result was for U channel which showed that increasing the frying time increased the contrast, entropy and correlation. Developing the frying temperature up to 170 °C decreased contrast, entropy and correlation of images; however these factors were increased when frying temperature was 190 °C. These results were invert for homogeneity.