Detection and characterization of praline chocolates with wet-based and fat-based fillings using X-ray CT images

Praline chocolate is known to have poor stability and is susceptible to damage (deformation) due to interaction factors with the filling. X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) is a non-destructive instrument that can be used to identify the microstructure and the component of a product that affect the sensory of chocolate. X-ray CT scanning of praline chocolate is carried out at low resolution so that the interaction of the addition of filling on the final quality of chocolate can be known. The purpose of this study was to develop the method which can used to identify and visualize the internal component of praline chocolate due to the addition of fillings. The samples used consisted of three treatments, namely control (without filling), pineapple jam filling (wet-based) and peanut butter filling (fat-based). The grey value showed that there are three different regions including peanut butter region (lower), dark chocolate region, and pineapple jam region (higher). Filling regions were able to segmented by particular method. The better method for pineapple jam filling is MaxEntropy, while peanut butter is IJIsoData. This method is able to identify the component of fillings according to the grey value which will be essential to predict the deformation. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.