Journal of Food Engineering, Vol.173, 42-48, 2016
Measuring the food microstructure by two-point cluster function
The clustering of pores of three types of bread was studied by measuring the two point cluster function, C-2(r). The ability of this function in describing the connectivity among the structure elements of bread was proved by comparing the C-2(r) of a "reference" and a "reconstructed" bread image having the same porosity fraction and lineal path distribution function, L(r). The two point cluster function of the void phase of two commercial, "Pan Briosce" and "Pancarre", and a non commercial, "White", bread enabled to highlight significant differences of their topological properties. "White" bread was characterized from more homogeneous pores with a lower degree of connectivity while the "Pancarre" samples exhibited voids highly connected producing pores bigger in size and with a shape extremely complex. Furthermore, for the first time it was proved as the microstructure information of the two point cluster function allows discriminating the 90% of the total variace of bread samples. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.