Anisotropic effect on the predictability of intramuscular fat content in pork by hyperspectral imaging and chemometrics.

The fibrous structure of meat muscle makes it an anisotropic optical material. As such, spectral information varies with the orientation of the muscle. In this study, spectral data from pork cuts were obtained by a transverse scan (TRANSCAN), radial scan (RADISCAN), and longitudinal scan (LONGSCAN) by using hyperspectral imaging. The information was used to develop and compare the prediction models for intramuscular (IMF) content prediction by partial least square regression (PLSR), support vector machines regression (SVMR), and backpropagation artificial neural network (BPANN). The three modeling algorithms showed equal capability for modeling IMF in pork. The accuracy of the prediction models from the three scans was in the order of TRANSCAN ≥ RADISCAN ≥ LONGSCAN. Successive projection algorithm reduced the wavelengths to 93%. The reduced wavelengths were used to build new models that showed similar accuracy to the models of the original wavelengths. This study shows that muscle orientation influences the accuracy of the prediction models.