XSpectra®: The most advanced real time food contaminants detector

Abstract

With the aim to contribute to the persistent effort to enhance quality controls carried out by the food community, Xnext1® has developed an innovative technology (XSpectra1®) for X-ray real time inspection. The application exploits a semiconductor detector (Cadmium Telluride) and a licensed electronic readout system which has been designed to handle big flux of data. Differently from conventional machines, such application allows to discriminate multi spectral energies, so that it can gather more informations suitable to distinguish different materials. As a matter of fact, X-ray spectra strongly depend on the mediums the radiation crosses along its path, due to the radiation-matter interaction. By means of advanced imaging techniques and deep learning models, the system is able to identify organic and low density contaminants which are currently not detected. The great potentiality of such technology is also related to its wide flexibility. Indeed, it can operate in several quality industrial inspection such as ripeness status of the fruit or for instance the homogeneity of the bread loaf.