# Sensory Panel Performance Evaluation--Comprehensive Review of Practical Approaches
## 5 Software
To improve discrimination, repeatability, reproducibility and scale usage, individualized targeted tasks can be prescribed to the panelists and implemented under monitored conditions. The basic methods of the programmes listed here related to the assessors are scatter plots, which make the raw data easy to assess. The assessor-centric scatter plots make it possible to represent the assessors' raw data by product and by property. They can be used to determine if the use and referencing in the international literature made it a benchmark in this field. The development of the software was supported by the European Union. The Nofima (Norwegian Food Research Institute, As, Norway) and the Danish DTU (Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby Denmark) have jointly developed the open-source PanelCheck software released under a free license. The software developers implemented several uni- and multivariate statistical methods to measure the performance of sensory panels. In order to evaluate either an individual assessor or the panel, it is advisable to combine several performance measurement tools; however, there may be an overlap between the information provided. Among the methods, a number of easy-to-interpret yet univariate graphical methods--line diagram, mean and standard deviation diagram, correlation diagram, profile diagram, eggshell diagram, \(F\) and \(p\) diagram, mean squared error (MSE) diagram, prediction mean squared error (p-MSE) diagram--in addition to multivariate methods--Tucker-1 diagram, Manhattan diagram, two- and three-way ANOVA, principal component analysis (PCA)--can also be found. The use of the software is also facilitated by the quick entry of data and easy exportability. With the assistance of the \"help\" function, the most important methods are presented to the end users, and the evaluation of the panel is also suggested through a workflow (Figure 3) [13; 57]. The SenseCheck software was developed to facilitate and support product-specific panel tests performed with the nanocapsulated, validated and safe sensory reference materials developed by the AROXA(tm) company for the work of sensory panels in the food industry. The company's aroma standards are several specialized food and beverage types: beers, cider, soft drinks, water and wine, but the encapsulated reference standards can also be applied to other product groups. The advantage of reference standards is that they allow the panelists to identify and recognize the properties of the product. The AROXA(tm)  
Figure 3: The workflow of the PanelCheck [13]. standards are at pharmaceutical grade and comply with the strict manufacturing practices of pharmaceutical quality control (GMP). The use of AROXA(tm) reference materials and SenseCheck software provides an opportunity to test the proficiency of product expert panels. There are a number of ways to assess different skills and abilities related to sensory analysis. Proficiency tests using SenseCheck involve:  
* Examination of discriminatory abilities (using samples with a certain degree of difference);
* Testing of aroma identification abilities (using samples to which special aromas with known concentration and purity have been added);
* Scale usage analysis (using series of samples covering a wide range of intensities in a single flavor);
* Statistical analysis of repeated evaluations of samples (by analyzing routine test tasks evaluated by assessors).