Welcome

The EU FP7 project with the acronym InsideFood (‘Integrated sensing and imaging devices for designing, monitoring and controlling microstructure of foods’) aims to

▪    Develop novel instruments and software for inspecting food microstructure,

▪    Use them to improve our understanding of process-structure-property relationships through advanced mathematical models,

▪    Implement them in food processing plants.

In the framework of InsideFood, we will focus on both food model systems (multiphase gels, foams) as well as actual foods (cereal products, fresh and dried fruit). Further, we will use the following non-invasive sensors for characterising food microstructure

 

▪    Tomography: magnetic resonance (micro)imaging (MRI), X-ray nano and micro computed tomography (mCT), and high-resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT)

▪    Spectroscopy: time and space resolved NIR spectroscopy, NMR spectroscopy and multidimensional relaxation and diffusion methods

 

The microstructure will be related to food quality attributes (texture as measured by compression, penetrometry and acoustic emission, water status, absence of internal defects) and safety aspects (absence of foreign materials) of the selected foods and food model systems. Further, the aforementioned microstructure sensors will be used to improve nutritional aspects of food through the optimisation of sugar- and gluten-free cereal products.

Since we are dealing with products of important EU-dimension, and to cover the range of expertise to achieve integration of knowledge and methodologies, an EU-scale approach is necessary. The project will be carried out by a consortium including 6 research institutes, 4 SMEs and 2 large companies.