Improving the Detection of Blood on Poultry Meat Based Colorimetry Using a Camera

The purpose of this study was to measure blood levels in quail meat with a cellphone camera using a spectrophotometer as a standard. Samples were obtained from 9 pieces of quail meat cut by hanging, 9 pieces of quail meat cut without hanging, 9 pieces of quail carcass dead for 4 h, and 9 pieces of quail carcass dead for 8 h. The relative concentration of blood in the meat of the quail carcass with or without hanging measured on 430 nm with spectrophotometer after 4 h and 8 h were 0.0149%, 0.0165%, 0.0173%, and 0.0177%, respectively. Since the absorption coefficient of the main blood absorber namely hemoglobin differs significantly in the violet and red spectral regions, the time dependence of the absorption intensity obtained by spectrophotometer was compared with a similar dependence of the blue channel of a smartphone, measured using ImageJ. It has been shown that measurements by the smartphone have a similar tendency as the measurements of the spectrophotometer, and they can be used as indicators of blood concentration threshold in quail meat, and, as a consequence, determine the duration of this procedure.