Journal of Food Engineering 57 (2003) 8189

www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Pizza quality evaluation using computer visionpart 1

Pizza base and sauce spread
Da-Wen Sun *, Tadhg Brosnan
FRCFT Group, Department of Agricultural and Food Engineering, University College Dublin, National University of Ireland,
Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland
Received 16 November 2001; accepted 23 May 2002

Abstract
The growth in the popularity and consumption of pizzas has led to the need for automated quality inspection, so as to maintain
condence and increase production eciency. In the current research the use of computer vision for inspection of pizza base and
tomato sauce spread quality was investigated. Twenty pizza bases were analysed for base area, spatial ratio I (SRI), spatial ratio II
(SRII), and circularity. For the measurement of the sauce spread characteristics based on 25 samples, the indexes taken were sauce
area and heavy area percentage; a fuzzy logic system was then developed to classify the sauce spread samples into classes of acceptable and defective quality. The base area analysis gave a classication error of 13% when compared to human assessment. The
experimental results for the sauce spread analysis show that by using computer vision in conjunction with fuzzy logic a classication
accuracy of 92% can be achieved.
2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Computer vision; Pizza sauce; Pizza base; Fuzzy logic; Machine vision; Quality; Image processing; Pizza

1. Introduction
The pizza industry has continued to grow with unprecedented momentum in recent decades, leading to the
development of modern manufacturing processes and
facilities. However with the ever increasing production
eciency, the maintenance of quality is often dicult
due to changing production conditions and the inherent
sensitiveness of pizza-making. Much research has been
conducted in this area which focused on the individual aspects of pizza crust, sauce and cheese inspection
in order to achieve the desired quality (Burg, 1998).
However, quality assessment of pizza products is also
based on their appearance, with such aspects as the
shape of pizza base, sauce distribution, and topping
distribution being especially important in the present
competitive markets.
The quality of the pizza base and sauce plays an
important role in the overall quality of the whole pizza,
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +353-1-7165528; fax: +353-14752119.
E-mail address: dawen.sun@ucd.ie (D.-W. Sun).
URL: http://www.ucd.ie/
refrig.

with some researchers often stating that the sauce is

everything. The sauce is recognised as the signature
part of pizza (Burg, 1998) hence its quality and appearance need to be of the highest level. Poorly spread
pizza sauce or base shape as a result of incorrect processing conditions or equipment setup results in reduced
consumer satisfaction. Therefore strict inspection is
both vital and benecial to manufacturers.
Presently quality attribute inspection is performed
based on human visual assessment. However this process
requires the sensory evaluation of the sauce and base
characteristics so as to evaluate the quality. Human
graders are easy inuenced by physiological factors, resulting in subjective and inconsistent assessments, hence
if the inspection were achieved automatically, production speed and eciency would be improved in additional to the inspection accuracy, with an accompanying
reduction in production costs. Over the past decade advances in hardware and software for digital image processing have led to the development of computer vision
systems which evaluated the quality of diverse and processed foods (Locht, Thomsen, & Mikkelsen, 1997;
Gerrard, Gao, & Tan, 1996). These systems provide a
rapid, economic, consistent and even more accurate and

0260-8774/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 2 6 0 - 8 7 7 4 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 2 7 5 - 3

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D.-W. Sun, T. Brosnan / Journal of Food Engineering 57 (2003) 8189

Fig. 1. Classes of pizza bases found by human assessment. (a) Standard; (b) poor pressing; (c) poor alignment; and (d) owing base.

objective inspection tool (Li & Wang, 1999; Suranjan,

Doetkott, Chtioui, & Marsh, 1998; Sun, 2000).
In practice base quality can be classied into four
level (i.e. standard, poor pressing, poor alignment and owing base) as shown in Fig. 1, with the
tomato sauce spread quality classied into ve levels (i.e.
even spread, acceptable overwipe, acceptable underwipe, reject overwipe and reject underwipe)
which are illustrated in Fig. 2 as indicated by communication with Green Isle Foods (Naas, Ireland). However some of the classications were seen to overlap with
only little visual dierence between individual classications, making manual inspection dicult with the
possibility of greater error. Hence in the current study
computer vision coupled with fuzzy logic was used to
develop a fully automated pizza base and sauce spread
quality inspection technique.

2. Fuzzy logic theory

Fuzzy logic embodies the nature of humans mind in
some sense, as the conception of possibility and probability is truly underlined in this logic, on contrast with
the traditional Boolean logic. Hence any studied object
in fact, can be described as a fuzzy system. A fuzzy
system is based on fuzzy set, fuzzy membership and
fuzzy variable, which are the three basic concepts of

fuzzy logic. A fuzzy set S in a fuzzy space X is a set of

ordered pairs
S fx; lxjx 2 X g
where lx represents the grade of membership of x in
S. x is called fuzzy variable (Sonka, Hlavac, & Boyle,
1999). Fuzzy membership is a characteristic conception
of fuzzy logic.
To illustrate the dierent parts of fuzzy logic the pizza
sauce quantity on a pizza base was chosen as the aspect
over which the fuzzy sets were dened. The pizza sauce
quantity on a pizza is fuzzy space X , which is also called
the fuzzy universe (Tan, Gao, & Gerrard, 1999). Even
spread, acceptable overwipe, reject overwipe, acceptable
underwipe and reject underwipe, which are the ve levels
of pizza sauce quantity could be regarded as ve fuzzy
sets. If the pizza sauce area on a pizza base is chosen as
an index to reect the quantity, it is then one fuzzy
variable. Fuzzy membership links up fuzzy set and fuzzy
variable. Fuzzy membership function is the mathematical expression of the relationship between fuzzy membership and fuzzy variable.
The application of fuzzy logic presents exible forms.
This exibility stems from the exible usage of fuzzy sets.
According to Dutta (1993), though some formal procedures have been proposed for obtaining fuzzy set mapping, no theoretically universal method exists. In fuzzy

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83

Fig. 2. Classication of pizza sauce spread characteristics by quality personnel. (a) Reject underwipe; (b) acceptable underwipe; (c) even spread; (d)
acceptable overwipe; and (e) reject overwipe.

system design, a principle called minimum normal form,

which requires at least one element of the fuzzy set domain to have a membership value of one, is most widely
used. A number of fuzzy functions such as, linear, sigmoid, beta curve, triangular curve, trapezoidal curve, arbitrary, etc., can be found in literature (Sonka et al.,
1999). The exibility of fuzzy set design allows dierent
relationships between the neighbouring sets. Fuzzy sets
in a fuzzy universe could be fully separated or the fuzzy
sets can also be arranged in an overlapping manner.
Hence in fuzzy logic the freedom of both shape and association of the fuzzy sets provide a broad base for applying fuzzy logic, however the design of a series of fuzzy
sets depends on the characteristics and complexity of
problem.

3. Materials and methods

3.1. Samples of pizza
For the analysis of pizza bases 20 pizza base samples
and 25 pizza samples with tomato sauce spread provided
by Green Isle Foods (Naas, Ireland) were analysed.
Prior to inspection by the computer vision system the
pizza base samples were categorised into four classes
by the qualied inspection personnel in the company
with ve samples in each level. The classes were as follows (a) standard (Fig. 1a), (b) poor pressing (Fig. 1b),
(c) poor alignment (Fig. 1c), and (d) owing base (Fig.
1d). The sauce spread characteristics on 25 dierent
pizza bases were also examined. The pizza sauce quality

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D.-W. Sun, T. Brosnan / Journal of Food Engineering 57 (2003) 8189

was classied into ve levels (ve replications in each

level) by the inspection personnel. The categorises
were as follows: (a) reject underwipe (Fig. 2a), (b) acceptable underwipe (Fig. 2b), (c) even spread (Fig. 2c),
(d) acceptable overwipe (Fig. 2d), and (e) reject overwipe (Fig. 2e).
3.2. Image analysis
The architecture of the computer vision system used
in the experiments consisted of the following elements:
uorescent lights (Kaiserfototechnik, Germany), a high
quality 3 CCD Sony XC-003P camera, an IC-RGB
frame grabber (Imaging Technology, US) and a Dell
Workstation 400 with dual Pentium II under Window
NT 4.0. For an even light distribution during the image
acquisition a plastic light diuser was placed in front of
the two lights. During the research images were collected
by placing the pizza samples on a white background
under the controlled light conditions. Prior to image
acquisition the position of the lighting was adjusted to
give the minimum reection. The focal length and aperture of the CCD camera were xed for the duration of
the research to give the best quality images. Optimas
6.51 (Media Cybernetics, USA) software was used for
the subsequent analysis of the captured images. The
experimental setup is shown in Fig. 3.
3.3. Pizza base analysis
Image analysis was performed by thresholding. The
segmentation of the pizza base image from the background was achieved by using the red, green, blue
(RGB) model through setting the red, green, blue values
in the range of 0255. From the segmented images the
area, Feret diameter (FD) and circularity was determined.
The FD is the distance between two tangents on
opposite side of the area perpendicular to a given direction (Optimas, 1998). Circularity (L2 =s) is dened as
the perimeter (L) squared divided by the area (s) with a
value of 4p (12.57) for a perfect circle (Optimas, 1998).

However a diculty arises as the proximity to this value

does not relate well to the roundness of the shape. Hence
the circularity index alone was not enough for adequate
shape analysis. Therefore two other criteria were introduced.
(1) Spatial ratio I SRI pizza base area/area of the
smallest round which can hold the pizza base.
(2) Spatial ratio II SRII area of the biggest round
which can be t into by the pizza base/pizza base
area.
As Optimas does not measure the area of the smallest
and biggest rounds directly, other means were devised to
obtain their valves. This involved the use of FD measured at 1 intervals to a maximum of 180 from which
the required diameters were determined thus allowing
the areas to be calculated.
3.4. Pizza sauce spread analysis
For pizza sauce analysis the image analysis was also
based on thresholding which included three steps.
Firstly segmentation of the whole pizza image from the
white background was performed using the RGB model.
Following this initial classication, segmentation of
pizza sauce from pizza base was achieved using the hue,
saturation and intensity (HSI) model, by setting the HSI
values in the following ranges [220, 14], [0, 125] and [0,
200], respectively. Finally segmentation of the light
zones of pizza sauce was accomplished by setting the
HSI values as follows [2, 14], [53, 125] and [106, 200],
respectively. This segmentation was considered necessary as the ratio of the heavy zones to light zones was
believed to signicantly aect human assessment of
pizza sauce spread quality. Fig. 4 shows the segmentation of an individual sample on the basis of heavy and
light zones of sauce.
Two indices were chosen for evaluating the quantity
of pizza sauce spread on pizza bases:
(1) Sauce area percentage (%) SAP sauce area=
pizza base area 100:
(2) Heavy area percentage (%) HAP heavy zone
area=sauce area 100
where the heavy zones were dened by thresholding as
described earlier.
3.5. Rating of pizza sauce spread quality based on fuzzy
logic

Fig. 3. Arrangement of the computer vision system.

3.5.1. Fuzzy set establishment

As mentioned earlier there is no universal method for
fuzzy set establishment. In the current research the ve
dierent levels of sauce spread were dened in linguistic

D.-W. Sun, T. Brosnan / Journal of Food Engineering 57 (2003) 8189

85

Fig. 4. Segmentation of a sample on the basis of light and heavy zones of sauce. (a) Original image of even spread sample and (b) image after
segmentation where white zones are the light sauce spread areas.

terms by the quality personnel. However the terms

themselves contain the information about the corresponding construction of the fuzzy sets. Acceptable
overwipe and reject overwipe, for instance, are both in
the range of overwipe, although at dierent intensity
levels. Therefore, the two levels should be interrelated
when converted into fuzzy sets. This overlapping may
also occur for other classications and/or sets.
In the current investigation the fuzzy sets were created with triangular membership functions. The fuzzy
set development can be described as follows. Firstly it is
necessary to dene the scale of each fuzzy set. In the
SAP fuzzy universe, for example, there are ve SAP
values in each set. The minimum value of one set was
used as the left boundary and the maximum as the right
boundary of the respective sets. The next step was to
locate the point with full membership for a triangular
membership function. In this case the mean of the one
set (ve values) was chosen as the point with a membership value equal to 1. Finally the fuzzy set was constructed by setting the left and right boundaries as zero
membership and drawing the triangle by connecting the
known three points.
The fuzzy sets built in this way have such characteristics that when the intensity of an evaluation index
(value of a fuzzy variable) moves from left to right in the
universe, its membership grade decreases in one set and
increases in another in a linear fashion, with the membership grades in the two adjacent and partly overlapping sets having a sum of 1.
3.5.2. Ambiguous degree calculation
In the fuzzy universes of SAP and HAP, the fuzzy set
construction was dierent since the SAP and HAP are
not related to each other. It was considered that the
overlapping condition of a fuzzy universe can reect the
fuzzy degree of a universe. Therefore, ambiguous degree
(AD) which is a measure of the fuzzy degree is based on
the overlapping area and dened as

Ambiguous degree AD total overlapping area/

total area of the ve fuzzy sets
3.5.3. Fuzzy evaluation score
For SAP and HAP, two AD values can be obtained,
i.e. AD1 and AD2 , respectively. It was found that the
greater the AD value the less of the corresponding index
which was taken into account for judging pizza sauce
quantity in the human assessment. Therefore, fuzzy
evaluation score (FES) was developed to reect the sauce
spread quantity using the fuzzy logic. FES is dened as
n
X
FES
xn =ADn MFn 
i1

where n denotes the evaluation indices; xn is the fuzzy

variable value for index n; magnitude factor (MF) is the
mean of the 25 variable values for index n. Through FES
calculation, each pizza sample was given a nal score of
sauce quantity based on fuzzy logic.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Pizza base
The results of the four indices, base area, SRI, SRII,
and circularity are shown in Table 1. Firstly evaluation
of the standard samples was performed to allow comparison. From the ve results the lowest value of the
area, SRI, SRII and the poorest circularity in the analysed samples were considered as the basis for classication into acceptable and unacceptable quality levels.
The area limit was 390.47 cm2 with the lowest tolerated
SRI and SRII values of 0.90984 and 0.92221 and the
circularity of 14.094. Any pizza base with results smaller
than its corresponding limit area, SRI and SRII or larger circularity than the limit was considered as defect.
It was found that after studying the results based on
the limits, poor pressing 3 and poor pressing 5
were still judged to be of acceptable quality by this

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D.-W. Sun, T. Brosnan / Journal of Food Engineering 57 (2003) 8189

Table 3
Area measurement results of the pizza bases with pizza sauce

Table 1
Shape analysis of pizza bases
Base area
(cm2 )

SRI

SRII

Circularity

Sample

1
2
3
4
5

424.70
394.69
h386.49i
h387.78i
390.79

h0.81306i
0.94323
0.94447
0.93440
0.93020

h0.90273i
0.95796
0.94023
0.92971
h0.91764i

h14.591i
h14.425i
h14.212i
h14.238i
h14.137i

Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject

Poor
Poor
Poor
Poor
Poor

alignment
alignment
alignment
alignment
alignment

1 h381.12i
2 402.23
3 397.30
4 410.23
5 h384.68i

0.94596
0.92069
h0.87400i
0.92041
0.92967

h0.91713i
h0.91972i
0.92650
0.95046
0.94272

h14.119i
h14.439i
14.070
h14.226i
h14.095i

Poor
Poor
Poor
Poor
Poor

pressing
pressing
pressing
pressing
pressing

h379.52i
399.44
391.56
390.90
403.12

0.95578
0.94981
0.94729
h0.89377i
0.94155

0.92527
0.95895
0.94156
h0.92211i
0.95934

0.93802
0.94948

0.90984
0.95005
0.93629

0.96373
0.97021

0.92221
0.96190
0.95902

Sample
Flowing
Flowing
Flowing
Flowing
Flowing

base
base
base
base
base

Standard
Standard
Standard
Standard
Standard

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

390.47
396.34
399.48
397.06
395.73

Pizza base
area (cm2 )

Sauce area
(cm2 )

Heavy area
(cm2 )

399.42
412.97
393.83
398.46
393.16

287.88
315.88
321.01
279.21
330.81

163.61
219.73
187.05
168.83
241.18

Acceptable underwipe 1
Acceptable underwipe 2
Acceptable underwipe 3
Acceptable underwipe 4
Acceptable underwipe 5

387.80
386.24
403.97
392.77
402.61

322.37
335.92
367.98
346.43
363.88

247.78
265.88
272.27
272.00
270.03

h14.174i
h14.196i
14.066
14.057
14.064

Even
Even
Even
Even
Even

394.94
382.75
376.55
397.32
405.16

338.62
340.91
350.23
353.12
359.62

264.73
230.25
249.60
268.91
254.37

14.031
13.981
14.031
14.002

14.094

Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable

402.69
399.87
381.30
409.96
411.54

369.75
372.25
360.94
386.76
362.05

249.57
286.49
285.62
298.47
264.07

404.61
414.15
395.79
419.22
405.76

382.54
404.77
373.83
410.06
374.57

298.57
328.11
254.96
344.04
282.27

The gures in the bracket are out of the limit of the standard shape.
The gures with an asterisk ahead are limit value of the four indices
for the standard shape, respectively.

classication technique. This result was acceptable, as

from visual inspection these samples showed no evident
poorer shape. However this represents an inaccuracy of
13% when a combination of these indexes were used.
In practice as high speed processing is important, the
order of the four indices used when running the program
has to be determined to produce an ecient and eective
quality analysis system. Using the results from Table 1
the classication accuracy for each of the four indexes
was determined and shown in Table 2. The most eective classication was attained by use of the circularity
index however even though SRI and SRII are much less
ecient, they still were used for the classication of
some samples. Hence the best order to apply the indexes
is circularity, base area, SRII and SRI to determine
acceptable and defective pizza bases.
4.2. Pizza sauce
The results on sauce area and heavy area obtained
from the samples by image analysis are found in Table 3.
Table 2
The number and percentage of defective samples found by each index

Numbera
Ratio (%)b
a

Base area

SRI

SRII

Circularity

5
33.3

3
20

4
26.7

11
73.3

The number is only limited to the 15 defected samples.

Ratio (%) is the percentage of the number found as defect in the 15
defected samples.
b

underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe

spread
spread
spread
spread
spread

Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe

overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

Based on these data, the SAP and HAP results were

calculated with the ndings presented in Table 4. As
expected these results show an increasing trend in the
two index percentages, however it was found that some
of the classications would seem incorrect, evident from
the overlapping in some classes. Fig. 5 shows the data in
Table 3 in a graphical form for visualising the overlapping of the dierent personnel classications. Fig. 5
clearly shows four classes overlap except for reject underwipe which is separate from the other classes. The
overlapping is not seen as an inaccuracy by the image
analysis system but as a reection of the subjective and
inconsistent nature of human assessment. These drawbacks allow the reserved fuzzy mechanisms proposed to
be studied and utilised.
These fuzzy mechanisms are composed of two elements: fuzzy parameters and the fuzzy degrees of those
parameters. The fuzzy parameters are the views used by
the human to evaluate the object, and the fuzzy degrees
are an embodiment of the sensory resolution of the
views. The greater a fuzzy degree, the poorer resolution
of a corresponding view. SAP and HAP are two fuzzy
parameters that were considered signicant to aect the
judging results.
Based on the data in Table 4, two series of fuzzy sets
of SAP and HAP were established as shown in Figs. 6
and 7, respectively. From these gures it was found that

D.-W. Sun, T. Brosnan / Journal of Food Engineering 57 (2003) 8189

87

Table 4
Sauce distribution analysis of the pizza samples with pizza sauce
Sample
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject

underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe

Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Even
Even
Even
Even
Even

underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe

spread
spread
spread
spread
spread

Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe

overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

Sauce area
percentage (%)

Heavy area
percentage (%)

72.07
76.49
81.51
70.07
84.14

56.83
72.73
58.27
60.47
72.91

83.13
86.97
91.09
88.20
90.38

76.86
79.15
73.99
78.51
74.21

85.74
89.07
93.01
88.62
88.76

78.18
67.54
71.27
76.15
70.73

91.82
93.09
94.66
94.34
87.97

67.50
76.96
79.13
77.17
72.97

94.55
97.74
94.45
97.96
92.31

78.05
81.06
68.20
83.92
75.36

Fig. 5. Tomato sauce distribution showing the overlapping of the

dierent classes evaluated by pizza quality personnel. (r) Reject underwipe; (j) acceptable underwipe; (N) even spread; ( ) acceptable
overwipe; and () reject overwipe.

the values of AD1 and AD2 were 0.2330 and 0.3683,

respectively. Since AD1 is less than AD2 , therefore SAP
was more ecient than HAP as a fuzzy index. In Fig. 7
the position of set T2 is out of order, which demonstrates more fuzziness within this fuzzy universe.
The FES values were calculated with the corresponding results found in Table 5. The FES values were
subsequently converted into a ranking of pizza sauce
spread quality. In the ideal situation the applied classication of ranking should show an increase in rank
of an individual set in a random manner. However
the reported results obtained from the fuzzy logic

Fig. 6. The fuzzy sets representing membership of sauce area percentage (%) for the ve linguistic levels. Set T1: reject underwipe; Set T2: acceptable
underwipe; Set T3: even spread; Set T4: acceptable overwipe; and Set T5: reject overwipe. The shadow areas are overlapping boundaries.

Fig. 7. The fuzzy sets representing membership of heavy area percentage (%) for the ve linguistic levels. Set T1: reject underwipe; Set T2: acceptable
underwipe; Set T3: even spread; Set T4: acceptable overwipe; and Set T5: reject overwipe. The shadow areas are overlapping boundaries.

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D.-W. Sun, T. Brosnan / Journal of Food Engineering 57 (2003) 8189

Table 5
FES of the sauced pizza samples
Sample
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject

underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe

Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Even
Even
Even
Even
Even

underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe
underwipe

spread
spread
spread
spread
spread

Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Acceptable
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject
Reject

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe

overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe
overwipe

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

1
2
3
4
5

FES

Ranka

5.612
6.417
6.124
5.650
6.796

1
4
3
2
5

6.893
7.165
7.173
7.201
7.147

7
15
17
18
14

7.069
6.836
7.166
7.134
6.939

11
6
16
13
8

6.968
7.381
7.538
7.449
6.984

9
20
23
21
10

7.492
7.759
7.122
7.876
7.284

22
24
h12i
25
h19i

The results in bracket were proven to be inspection mistake.

a
The rank is obtained by comparing the FES in an increasing sequence.

classication do not agree with the ideal case. The

misclassication rate over the ve levels was 52%.
However in practice the ve classes would be reduced to
two, i.e. acceptable and unacceptable. Therefore the
misclassication rate was then reduced to only 8% with
two errors from 25 samples. These misclassications
may be accounted for from two possible sources, algorithm inaccuracy and quality personnel misclassication. Algorithm inaccuracies originate from the use
of only two indexes for the calculation of the FES, with
the possibility that further elements of the pizza sauce

quality may inuence consumer judgement. As mentioned earlier the assessment by human personnel leads
to subjectivity and inconsistency, which is conrmed by
the results in Fig. 5, showing the overlapping of the
linguistic terms.
The concept of using FES values as basis for the
construction of a fuzzy set was also considered (Fig. 8).
It is found that the AD value for the system was only
0.2005, which was less than both AD1 and AD2 . This
indicates that accuracy could be improved by introducing multi-factors into the fuzzy set design, thus validating the theory and method for this evaluation
criterion.

5. Conclusions
The results conrm that the computer vision can be
used for the analysis of pizza base and tomato sauce
spread characteristics. For the pizza base analysis a
shape and size technique was developed to classify the
captured images. The image analysis algorithm consisted of four dierent indexes with circularity being the
most eective for classication. The overall accuracy of
the system was 87% when compared with human quality
inspection.
The sauce spread analysis developed was based on the
use of fuzzy logic for the classication of acceptable and
defective quality samples. It was found that an overall
accuracy of 92% was obtained when only two levels
of quality was considered, however an inaccuracy of
52% was attained when classication into ve was tested. From the analysis it was also found that human
assessment overlapped in four of the dened classes,
indicating the inaccuracy and subjectivity of human inspection. From the results SAP was found to be a better
fuzzy index than HAP, however FES gave the best AD
value for the system examined. This indicates that system accuracy would be improved by the use of multi
quality measures in the calculation of the FES and
subsequent classication of the samples.

Fig. 8. The fuzzy sets representing membership of FES for the ve linguistic levels. Set T1: reject underwipe; Set T2: acceptable underwipe; Set T3:
even spread; Set T4: acceptable overwipe; and Set T5: reject overwipe. The shadow areas are overlapping boundaries.

D.-W. Sun, T. Brosnan / Journal of Food Engineering 57 (2003) 8189

Acknowledgements
This research has been part-funded by grant aid
under the European Regional Development Funs, which
is administered by the Department of Agriculture, Food
and Forestry, Ireland. The authors also wish to acknowledge Green Isle Foods (Naas, Ireland) for providing the samples and to thank student Mr. L. Wang
for his help in analysing the samples.

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