MRI-aided texture analyses of compressed meat products

Viscoelastic properties of food products can already be assessed by conventional (non-imaging) methods, such as compression-recovery creep (CRC), texture property analysis (TPA) and stress-relaxation (SR) methods. In the study, an alternative to these methods based on MRI of samples in a compression cell is proposed. Different commercial meat products were subjected to two different compression protocols. The first (protocol P1) was designed to mimic a CRC experiment and the second (protocol P2) was based on application of three different constant pressures (0, 160, 400 kPa). The samples were imaged either by consecutive 1D MR intensity profiles (protocol P1) or by 3D T2 mapping (protocol P2). Compression-induced samples changes were characterized by creep compliance obtained from the 1D profiles, while the T2 maps were analyzed by using first- and second-order statistical texture feature analyses. The approach enabled spatially-resolved assessment of viscoelastic properties and compression-induced structural changes of the examined samples.