Post-harvest quality evaluation by pulsed thermographic inspection

Pulsed thermographic inspection is native to the domain of fault inspection in rigid bodies such as polymer and metal plates. Recent research has shown that it also has some utility for agricultural applications, such as the detection of foreign bodies in bulk harvested goods. For the problems of cotton foreign matter detection and blueberry bruise detection, a variety of sensing modalities have been applied, but to date no research has been conducted into the use of thermal imaging to accomplish these tasks. We perform pulsed thermographic inspection of cotton foreign matter and cotton lint, extract appropriate features, and demonstrate the ability to discriminate between classes on the basis of these features. Similarly, we examine bruised and healthy blueberries and show that they can be differentiated by pulsed thermographic inspection.