Patent ID: 8280144

Claim:
A method for determining material properties of an animal tissue, said method comprising: a. using an imaging component to obtain a hyperspectral image of at least a portion of said animal tissue, said hyperspectral image comprising data along the spectral axis consisting of hundreds of narrow spectral bands, said imaging component comprising a hyperspectral camera and a lighting system, said lighting system selected from the group consisting of a concentrated lighting system and a diffuse lighting system; wherein said hyperspectral camera is configured to perform a technique of imaging selected from the group consisting of reflectance, transmission, scattering, fluorescence, and x-ray transmission, and wherein said hyperspectral camera is configurable to collect images in the wavelength range of 200 nm to 12,000 nm, whereby said hyperspectral camera is actuated and a hyperspectral image of said portion of said animal tissue is obtained; and b. using an analysis component comprising a system having computer programming to analyze said hundreds of spectral bands of said hyperspectral image to generate material properties data that describes material properties of said animal tissue, said system employing a reduction component to remove redundant information in said data contained in said hyperspectral image, whereby a simplified image is created, said system further employing an extraction component to extract image-textural features from said simplified image, thereby creating extracted image-textural feature data, said system further employing a recognition component for using pattern recognition algorithms to relate said extracted image-textural feature data to said material properties associated with said animal tissue, and said system further comprising an output component for outputting said materials property data, wherein said animal tissue is a meat product, wherein said meat product is a fresh cut of beef, and wherein said material property is a prediction of cooked-beef tenderness, and wherein said beef is classifiable into a category based on said material property prediction of cooked-beef tenderness.