Good sausage, bad sausage: Analysis with VS-Analysis
Application
Routine histology
Institute
Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority, Dr. Tanja Grünewald.
Assignment of tasks
The institute for food quality and safety analyses sausages on a routine bases to determine its content of different organs, glands, bone and cartilage as well as other additives. Among other criteria this defines the quality of a sausage. To stain the muscle tissue (good ingredient of sausages) in green (A) usually the Calleja or Calleja-Lugol protocol is used but can be measured in other stains, too. To stain bone particles (red) the Alizarin-S-stain is used.
The image (A) was acquired using a VS120 BF with a VC50 camera at 10x magnification. The image was subsequently analyzed using the VS-Analysis solution (B) to analyze the percentage of red stained bone particles against the green stained protein matrix. The mean value of 10 sections, each 4cm2 was calculated.
Result
Object Class
red
green
Sum area (mm2)
1.28
221.42
Total area (mm2)
394.25
Area fraction (%)
0.24
99.76
Conclusion
In this case the sausage tissue was not of very high quality as it contained 0.24% of bone particles which can be a hint that separated meat was used as an ingredient. Moreover, it was shown that using an easy to use VS120 BF system with subsequent image analysis using VS-Analysis provides users with a powerful and reliable tool facilitating their daily routine work.
Products
To analyse the sausage tissue and determine its quality a VS120 BF with VC50 camera was used. Moreover, VS-Analysis solution was applied.