Monitoring food quality using an optical fibre based sensor system - A comparison of Kohonen and back-propagation neural network classification techniques

This paper reports on two methods of classifying the spectral data from an optical fibre based sensor system as used in the food industry. The first method uses a feed-forward back-propagation artificial neural network while the second method involves using Kohonen self-organizing maps. The sensor monitors the food colour online as the food cooks by examining the reflected light from both the surface and the core of the product. The combination of using principal component analysis and back-propagation neural networks has been successfully investigated previously. In this paper, results obtained using this method are compared with results obtained using a self-organizing map trained on the principal components. The principal components used to train both classifiers are ordered in a 'colourscale' - a scale developed to allow several products of similar colour to be tested using a single network that had been trained using the colourscale. The results presented show that both classifiers perform well, and that any differences that arise occur at the boundaries of the classes.