Computer vision technology for real-time food quality assurance during drying process

•Acceptable potential of computer vision for monitoring and controlling of food drying process.•Suitability of computer vision to assess shape, size, color, and texture of food over common methods.•Producing the high quality dried foodstuffs with the aid of computer vision technology.•Suggestions of outlooks for future research directions on the monitoring and controlling of dryers.

Drying process causes many changes in the mechanical, sensorial, and nutritional properties of food products. One main challenge in the production of dried food products with acceptable shape, size, color, and texture is to monitor and control their appearance in real-time manner. Currently, there is an increasing demand for real-time approaches such as computer vision technology to monitor and control the food quality indicators including shape, size, color, and texture during drying process. This note briefly describes the potential application of computer vision system in the monitoring and controlling of the food drying process in order to enhance the dried product quality and identifies prospects for future investigations.