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Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

www.elsevier.com/locate/foodres

Granulometry of bread crumb grain: Contributions of 2D and 3D


image analysis at dierent scale
Nejla Lassoued

a,b,d

, Perrine Babin a,c,e, Guy Della Valle a, Marie-Francoise Devaux


Anne-Laure Reguerre a

a,*

a
INRA, UR1268 Biopolyme`res, Interactions et Assemblages, BP 71627, F-44316 Nantes, France
Laboratoire de Biophysique, UMR-INRA SCALE 1211, ENSIA, 1 av des Olympiades, 91744 Massy, France
c
Genie Physique et Mecanique des Materiaux, INPG, BP 46, 38402 Saint Martin dHe`res, France
d
Centre Technique de Conservation des Produits Agricoles, Rue Marcel Luquet, 32000 Auch, France
e
Science Computers Consultants, 8 Rue la Richelandie`re, Parc Giron 42100 St Etienne, France

Received 26 January 2007; accepted 5 June 2007

Abstract
Six bread crumbs were prepared from three dierent recipes and three baking procedures. Images of crumb were acquired in 2D at a
macroscopic scale by using a at bed scanner (resolution 85 lm) and in 3D at a local scale by X-ray tomography (resolution 10 lm). The
cellular structure was assessed by mathematical morphology. 2D image analysis was completed by principal component analysis. The
rst principal component was found to reect crumb neness, in agreement with the mean cell size determined in 3D at a local scale.
3D mean cell wall size were about 220 lm and were not signicantly dierent. The second principal component was linked to the 2D
macroscopic heterogeneity of the crumb and to the macroscopic cell wall thickness. 2D images can be applied to the rapid control of
crumb grain and could be used to quantify the cellular structure for the calculation of mechanical properties.
 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Bread crumb; Image analysis; X-ray tomography; Mathematical morphology; Image texture; Cell size

1. Introduction
Mechanical properties of baked products strongly
depend on their cellular structure (Scanlon & Zghal,
2001). Crumb grain, dened by the size, the distribution
and the shape of cells and cell wall thickness (Kamman,
1970) largely governs sensory properties (Baardseth,
Kvaal, Lea, Ellekjr, & Frgestad, 2000) and inuences
consumer purchase (Pyler, 1988). The characterisation of
crumb grain structure of baked products can be obtained
using imaging techniques. Among various devices, atbed
scanner, CCD camera and magnetic resonance imaging
were used to generate 2D images (Naito, Ishida, Takano,
Koizumi, & Kano, 2003; Rogers, Day, & Olewnik, 1995;
*

Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 2 40 6751 93; fax: +33 2 40 6750 84.
E-mail address: devaux@nantes.inra.fr (M.-F. Devaux).

0963-9969/$ - see front matter  2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.foodres.2007.06.004

Rouille, Della Valle, Devaux, Marion, & Dubreil, 2005)


and 3D visualisation was investigated using X-ray tomography (Falcone et al., 2005). Objective assessment of visual
features is obtained using image processing and analysis.
Two approaches have been developed in 2D image analysis of baked products. The rst one, based on cell segmentation, aims at determining the cell size and shape
distributions. Cells are identied in the image using a thresholding operation. Sapirstein, Roller, and Bushuk (1994)
applied the k-means clustering algorithm to determine a
grey level threshold for each bread type studied. A satisfactory characterisation of images based on crumb cells and
cell walls was obtained, but the procedure tended to
slightly underestimate the void fraction and overestimate
cell wall thickness. This deciency was conrmed by Zghal,
Scanlon, and Sapirstein (1999), who showed that the interconnection of cells and the complexity of cellular structure

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N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

of breads were probably responsible for the over-estimation of cell characteristics by this method. Gonzales-Barron
and Butler (2006) compared the k-means clustering algorithm to six other thresholding techniques and found substantial variations in crumb features such as cell
uniformity and void fraction according to threshold variations. Cell segmentation is probably not appropriate for
2D image analysis of the complex and non-uniform cellular
structure of baked products (Scanlon & Zghal, 2001).
The second approach is based on image texture analysis
directly applied on grey level images. Image texture can be
dened as the spatial distribution of grey levels and be
described as ne, smooth, coarse, grainy etc. Images displaying small cells produce frequent grey level changes
and therefore a ne texture, while those with large cells
generate a coarser texture. Several techniques have been
applied to quantify image textures resulting from various
crumb grain structures. Images of French breads crumb
manufactured with dierent surfactants were classied
using six texture characteristics extracted by two-dimensional Haar transform (Bertrand, Le Guerneve, Marion,
Devaux, & Robert, 1992). Zayas (1993) determined the
neness of crumb from commercial breads by analysis of
a (64)2 pixel subimages of a whole slice. Rogers et al.
(1995) extracted features from the frequency domain, by
processing sub-images of bread slice to characterise crumb
neness and crumb cell elongation. They compared their
results with expert crumb scores. Kvaal, Wold, Indahl,
Baardseth, and Ns (1998) compared dierent methods
of extracting features from images and tested their ability
to predict the porosity of wheat baguettes. Although all
these features were suitable to predict sensory properties,
results are somewhat dicult to interpret because their
physical meaning is not clear. Rouille et al. (2005) evaluated crumb grain of French breads manufactured with different ours, by a granulometric method using grey level
mathematical morphology. The morphological operators
used, i.e. erosion, dilation and their combination, opening
and closing, modify images according to the size and intensity of bright and dark regions. The method made possible
to dene a crumb neness index, related to cell size. All
these studies show that image texture analysis has potential
for determining some cellular structural features, whilst
avoiding thresholding and cell segmentation.
The analysis of bread cellular structure from 2D images
is limited because cells are truncated due to bread sectioning. Visualisation of bread structure in 3D can eliminate
this drawback and show the connection of cells. Recently,
magnetic resonance imaging with a spatial resolution of
100 100 lm2 and slice thickness from 0.25 to 0.4 mm
was applied to non-frozen and frozen dough and breads
with a measuring time of 20 min by Naito et al. (2003).
X-ray tomography can provide high quality 3D images of
cellular structure of food foam products, thanks to the
strong contrast between void and matter within the material (Lim & Barigou, 2004; Trater, Alavi, & Rizvi, 2005).
Falcone et al. (2005) analysed two crumb samples

28 mm3 from the same bread, with a resolution of 14 lm.


Indicators of cell and wall sizes were determined and quantitative analysis of the crumb anisotropy was carried out.
Babin, Della Valle, Dendievel, Lassoued, and Salvo
(2005) have also investigated X-ray tomography, with a
resolution of 10 lm, to link mechanical properties of
breads and their crumb cellular structure by nite element
analysis. More recently, the potential of fast X-ray tomography for the dynamic follow-up of dough during proong
and baking was demonstrated by determining bubble
growth kinetics and evidence of coalescence phenomena
(Babin et al., 2006). All these studies focused on small samples in order to obtain a high spatial resolution.
The 2D and 3D imaging techniques were applied at
dierent scales, whole cut section being analysed in 2D
and crumb sub volumes in 3D. Both 2D and 3D images
allowed the assessment of useful crumb characteristics.
No studies were reported comparing results obtained for
the same samples. Therefore, the aim of this work was
to compare 2D results to those obtained by 3D X-ray
tomography. Methods were applied on breads made from
dierent dough compositions and mould baked in order
to modify crumb grain whilst limiting loaf volume
changes. Mathematical morphology was retained as 2D
image texture analysis to quantify cell and wall size variations. Multivariate data analysis was applied to interpret
the dierences between samples. 3D granulometric analysis of cell and walls was achieved by 3D mathematical
morphology.
2. Material and methods
2.1. Samples
The wheat our was a standard commercial bread our,
granted by Grands Moulins de Paris (92238 Gennevilliers,
France). Its protein content was 10.2% and initial moisture
content 15% (total wet basis). It was mixed with sucrose,
salt, yeast and water, in a Brabender Farinograph (Brabender, USA) for 9 min. Four minutes before the end of
mixing, oil was added to the blend. At the end of mixing,
dough was placed in a cylindrical glass mould (
140 mm, 70 mm high) to rest in a proong room (Sepco,
France) at 25 C for 90 min, and was nally baked during
60 min at 180 C in the pilot electric oven (Bongard, 67810Holtzheim, France) described by Sommier, Chiron, Colonna, Della Valle, and Rouille (2005). Proong and baking
conditions were xed for all compositions as indicated in
Table 1. Sample D1 was baked in an open mould. Samples
D2 and D3 had the same composition as D1 and were
baked in covered moulds. In addition, D3 dough has been
separated in 4 pieces, the pieces being reassembled side by
side into the mould. The objective was to generate dierent
crumb structures with a same composition. After baking,
products were cooled for 2 h in a room with controlled
temperature at 25 C. Loaf volume was measured by the
rapeseeds displacement method.

N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097


Table 1
Bread composition and density (contents are given in % based on our;
yeast and salt contents were 3% and 2% respectively)
Name

Water

Sucrose

Oil

Loaf density
(g m3)

Solid material
density (g m3)

A
B
C
D1
D2
D3

60
65
55
55

2
10
15
2

2
10
2
10

0.21
0.33
0.40
0.24
0.26
0.26

1.18
1.21
1.26
1.20
1.18
1.18

D2 and D3 were baked in closed moulds. 2D3D crumb grain Lassoued


et al.

2.2. 2D image acquisition


Two or three vertical and central slices (10 mm thickness) were selected from each bread. Slices were positioned
at the centre of a atbed scanner (CanonScan D125U2)
and covered by a black box to obtain a good contrast
between the black background and the bright slices of
bread. Colour images were captured using ScanGear CSU software acquisition. The resolution was 300 dpi, i.e. 1
pixel = (85)2 lm2, and was therefore improved compared
to the (177)2 lm2 per pixel, reached by Rouille et al.
(2005) that used a CCD camera. An example of image is
given in Fig. 1.
2.3. 3D image acquisition
The characterisation of the cellular structure by X-ray
tomography was performed at ESRF (European Radiation Synchrotron Facility, F-38 Grenoble, beamline

Fig. 1. 2D and 3D images of bread crumb sample D1 obtained using a


atbed scanner (14.8 8.7 cm2) and X-ray tomography (6.7 6.7
6.9 mm3) (ESRF-Grenoble).

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ID19) as described by Babin et al. (2005). A tomographic


scan is composed of several hundred radiographs, taken
for dierent orientations of the sample placed on a rotation stage. 3D reconstruction is performed using an
appropriate algorithm. The very high intensity of the
X-ray beam and its monochromatic character allow quantitative analysis. About 1 cm3 of each bread crumb sample
was placed on the rotating plate stage. Images were
acquired to get a spatial resolution of 10 lm. Each scan
was composed of 900 two-dimensional shadow X-ray
images and took less than 10 min. Grey levels were coded
using 256 grey levels. A 700 700 700 voxels volume of
interest was selected from the reconstructed 3D images to
be located at the centre of the specimen to eliminate any
edge eects, artefacts and damage from sample cutting
(Fig. 1).
3. Image processing
3.1. 2D image processing
Colour images were converted into monochromatic
images with grey levels ranging from 0 to 255. Grey level
histograms of all scanned slices were examined altogether.
A grey level threshold of 100 was visually chosen to extract
the slices from the background. The nal region of interest
corresponding to crumb was obtained by erosion of the
mask of the slice using a squared structuring element of size
21 21 pixels (Soille, 2003). Bread crumbs have been characterised within the region of interest by grey level granulometry based on mathematical morphology as described in
detail by Rouille et al. (2005). The method is recalled in the
following.
Erosiondilation curves: Mathematical morphology is a
set of transformations based on probing images with masks
of given size and shape called structuring elements (Serra,
1982). The basic transformations are erosion and dilation
with squared structuring elements. The size n of erosion
or dilation denes the side size of the square as 2n + 1.
An example of erosion and dilation of size 5 is shown in
Fig. 2. After erosion, cell walls thinner than the structuring
element are removed and the sum of grey levels decreases.
Dilation makes cells smaller than the structuring element
disappear and the sum of grey level increase (Fig. 2).
Applying erosion and dilation of size 15 makes most walls
and cells, respectively disappear. A grey level granulometry
can be achieved by applying successively erosion or dilation of increasing size and by measuring at each step the
sum of grey levels. This sum continuously decreases from
the last dilation step to the original image and from the original image to the last erosion step. This decrease will
depend on the amount of walls and cells modied at each
step. A granulometric curve is obtained by normalizing
the sum of grey level, separately for dilations and erosions,
according to:
Gi jV i  V f   100=V 0  V f j

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N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

Fig. 2. Illustration of erosion and dilation treatments applied to crumb from bread dough D1 image shown in Fig. 1. First line: erosion and dilation of size
5, second line: erosion and dilation of step 15.

where i is the dilation or erosion step, V0 and Vf are the


sum of grey level for the original image and after the last
dilation or erosion step, respectively. The nal curve,
called erosiondilation curve, is obtained by assessing
the derivative of G for erosions and dilations and by joining the two resulting curves from f to 1 for dilation and
from 1 to f for erosion, f being the largest transformation
applied (Fig. 3). Erosiondilation curves therefore measure the proportions of grey level that are modied between two successive erosion or dilation steps. In the
present work, 30 erosion steps and 30 dilation steps were
applied.
Erosiondilation curves were analysed by principal component analysis. A data table was built in which each row
represents an image and each column one of the erosion or
dilation steps. The values in the data table are the grey level
variations observed at each step. Principal component
analysis assessed synthetic uncorrelated components that
revealed similarities between images by taking all erosion
and dilation steps into account. Similarity maps of images
can be drawn from principal component scores. Principal
components are interpreted by looking at loadings that
reveal the weight of each erosion or dilation step in their
computation.
Fineness index: In the preceding study (Rouille et al.,
2005), we dened a neness index for the crumb cells from
morphological closing. Closing consists in applying a
dilation immediately followed by an erosion of the same
size and can be compared to a sieving of dark objects in
the image, i.e., crumb cells in our case. Fineness was
dened as the percentage of grey level variations measured
after a closing corresponding to a square of size 1 mm2.
This index is not a measurement of the actual area of cells

Fig. 3. Examples of granulometric curves for crumb A (coarse) and crumb


C (thin). The right part of the curve corresponds to erosion steps from the
smallest to the largest one and therefore characterises grey level variations
due to bright cell walls. The left part of the curve corresponds to dilation
steps from the largest to the smallest step, characterising grey level
variations due to cells. Step units are given in mm, one step corresponding
to a variation of 2 85 = 170 lm.

of size lower than 1 mm2, but describes the variation of


grey level caused by the occurrence of these small cells.
The more small cells are observed, the higher will be this
index.
Image processing program was written using procedures
of the Aphelion software (ADCIS, France). Calculation of
the granulometric curves and principal components analysis were performed with Matlab 6.0 software (the Math
Works, France).

N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

3.2. 3D image processing


Due to the good contrast of the images (Fig. 1), cell segmentation could be performed using a single threshold
automatically determined by the ImageJ software. It was
checked that a variation of 10 in the threshold selected
generated only 1% deviation in the 3D characteristics
measured.
The fraction of voxels segmented as cell walls and considered as a wall volumic fraction is usually called relative
density. It is comparable to the ratio (q*/qs), q* being the
density of the crumb and qs the density of the material of
the cell walls.
Volumic distributions of cell size were determined by 3D
morphological granulometry, performed by iterations of
closing using octahedral structuring elements of increasing
size. Closing can be compared to a 3D sieving of black
objects in the images, black objects being removed from
the image according to their size. Volumic distributions
by closing are similar to usual granulometric distributions.
Volumic distributions of cell wall size were obtained by
openings (i.e. successive application of erosion and dilation of the same size) of increasing size. Similarly to closing, opening can be compared to a sieving of white

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objects, the walls in our case. This procedure actually estimates variations of cell wall thickness. The volumic means
of cell size and cell wall thickness were computed from
these distributions.
Image analysis procedures were developed at the GPM2
laboratory using ImageJ (Rasband, W.S., US National
Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA, http://
rsb.info.nih.gov/ij/, 19972006) and Aphelion (ADCIS,
France) software.
4. Results and discussion
A range of bread crumbs was obtained with densities
varying from 0.21 to 0.40 g cm3 (Table 1). Breads A and
D had close values whereas larger densities were obtained
for recipes B and C, which had larger sucrose contents
(10 and 15% our content). This result may be explained
by the depressing role played by a large concentration of
sugar on yeast, due to osmotic constraints. Examples of
images obtained in 2D and 3D are given in Figs. 4 and 5.
Images in Fig. 4 show that cells and walls were nicely visualised by using a at scanner with a better resolution than
the one obtained in a previous study using a CCD camera
(Rouille et al., 2005). Images in Fig. 5 show sections

Fig. 4. Examples of scanned images of bread crumb samples. From top to bottom and left to right: breads A, B, C, D1, D2 and D3. All images are
represented at the same scale and size of image A was 15.0 8.9 cm.

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N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

Fig. 5. Sections (7 7 mm2) of the 3D images obtained by X-ray tomography (ESRF-Grenoble) of the six bread crumb samples. From top to bottom and
left to right: breads A, B, C, D1, D2 and D3.

extracted from the 3D images obtained by X-ray tomography; they all displayed a good contrast between cells and
cell walls allowing cell segmentation.
Dierent cellular structures were obtained. Samples A
and D1 had crumbs with larger cells than the other samples
(Fig. 4). Some cells appeared opened and connected with
their neighbours. B and C had a ner cell structure with
smooth cell walls. D2 and D3 samples had also a ne cell
structure. 3D X-ray tomography images corresponded to
a smaller eld of view than 2D images. 7 7 mm2 examples
of sections are shown in Fig. 5. 3D resolution allows visualising cells as small as 30 lm. Connections between cells
were observed and, like 2D at scanner images, larger cells
were observed for samples A and D1.

ple A for dilation steps over 1 mm, reecting a higher


content of large cells in its crumb.
Eighteen images have been acquired in total for the
tested products and their erosiondilation curves were processed by principal components analysis. Though the number of images was not very important, the method provides
a synthetic comparison of the images by taking into
account all erosion and dilation steps. The rst two principal components took into account 82.3 and 11.8% of the
total variance. The corresponding similarity map (Fig. 6)

4.1. 2D image analysis


Examples of erosiondilation curves are represented in
Fig. 2 for samples A and C. The left side of the curve, corresponding to dilations, and the right side, corresponding
to erosions, give information about cell size and cell wall
thickness, respectively. Sizes were analysed between 0.255
and 5.185 mm for both cell and wall thickness. A higher
peak was obtained for sample C indicating that more grey
level variations were measured for the rst three erosion
and dilation steps. These steps corresponded to sizes smaller than 600 lm. This result evidences the ner texture of
sample C, suggesting a large content of small cells. Conversely, more grey level variations were observed for sam-

Fig. 6. Similarity map from principal component analysis of the erosion


dilation curves. Components 1 and 2 accounted for 82.6 and 11.8% of
total variance.

N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

shows that samples coming from the same kind of bread


were mainly clustered. Samples B and C were found on
the positive side of principal component 1 while samples
A, D1 and D2 were found on the negative side, D3 spreading on both sides. Observing crumb grain images and their
localisation on the similarity map showed that the rst
principal component classied crumbs from ner to coarser
texture, from right to left. This is conrmed by looking at
the corresponding loading (Fig. 7). Positive values were
found for the rst erosion and dilation steps and negative
values for the largest erosion steps. This reveals that samples on the positive side of component 1 had more grey
level variations associated to small size of erosion and dilation, i.e. a ner crumb texture. Indeed, in the case of particle size analysis, principal component 1 has already been
correlated to the average cell size (Devaux, Robert, Melcion, & Le Deschault de Monredon, 1997).
A crumb grain neness was dened in the preceding
study (Rouille et al., 2005) as the grey level fraction of cells
with a size < 1 mm. In the present work, average neness
values were found to vary between 33 and 42% (Table 2).
Fineness and component 1 gave the same classication of
the samples (Table 2) with a correlation coecient
r2 = 0.96 pointing that erosiondilation granulometric
curves contained the same information than this closing
index. In addition, erosiondilation curves also take into
account cell walls. Looking at component 1 provides a
sample classication based on the neness of cells without
dening any arbitrary limit value for neness like the 1 mm
chosen formerly.
Principal component 2 (11.8% of total variance)
revealed dierences between samples A and the other samples, mainly B, C and D2. The right part of the second
loading (Fig. 7b), suggest that crumbs with positive 2nd
component scores contained more thin cell walls. The left
part (dilation) of the second loading revealed positive values for intermediate sizes (0.51.5 mm) and negative values
for both large (size >1.5 mm) and small size (size
<0.5 mm). This could be related to the homogeneity of cell
size distribution. Indeed, in samples B, C and D3, small
cells were observed together with larger cell walls whereas

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Table 2
Crumb grain features of breads obtained by image analysis
Name 2D image analysis 3D image analysis

A
B
C
D1
D2
D3

Average Fineness Relative Estimated


PC1
(<1 mm) density density value
(g cm3)

Mean
cell size
(mm)

Mean wall
thickness
(mm)

2.30
1.11
2.27
1.53
0.88
1.11

1.47
1.12
0.84
1.50
1.15
1.14

0.24
0.25
0.21
0.19
0.22
0.20

33
39
42
35
37
40

0.19
0.25
0.31
0.17
0.23
0.21

0.22
0.30
0.39
0.20
0.27
0.25

2D3D crumb grain Lassoued et al.

thinner walls and larger cells were observed for sample


A. Moreover, samples B and C displayed cells of much different sizes (Fig. 4). All these results contribute to suggest
that principal component 2 is an indicator of wall thickness
and crumb homogeneity.
Some scatterings of the samples coming from the same
bread loaf were observed on the similarity map, for components 1 and 2 (Fig. 6). These variations are linked to the
dierences of texture between dierent slices in the bread
loaf: the spreading of sample A according to component
1 would reect variations along the direction orthogonal
to the slicing plane. It does not reect an artefact, but
rather an intrinsic feature of the bread itself, namely axial
heterogeneity. Sample C had a constant score for component 1, but presented signicant variations of crumb heterogeneity. Sample D3 displayed variations for both
components 1 and 2. Mean sizes and size distributions both
varied according to the slice observed, within the same
bread. Internal variability has been described as typical
of French breadmaking (Baardseth et al., 2000). Accordingly, this variability was also observed for the breads analysed in the present work.
4.2. 3D image analysis
Sections of 3D images of crumbs issued from X-ray
tomography are presented in Fig. 5. These images show

Fig. 7. First and second loadings corresponding to principal components 1 and 2 of the similarity map of the erosiondilation curves.

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N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

that the resolution allows analysing cell size, cell shape and
also wall thickness. For instance, the smaller cells appeared
more spherical than the larger ones (Fig. 5). These 2D
images also suggest that most of the cells were separated
from each other. In fact, connection between cells was
investigated by 3D image analysis. The 3D connectivity
index computed by the ratio of the largest cell volume to
the total void volume, according to Babin et al. (2006),
was close to 100%. This result proved that cells were highly
connected to each other, i.e. bread crumbs had an open cellular structure. This result is not surprising when considering the large relative density values, which varied between
0.19 (A) and 0.31 (C) (Table 2). Crumb porosity, i.e. cell
volumic fraction, therefore varied between 0.81 and 0.69.
The connection of cells thus addresses a sterical constraint
since maximum random packing fraction is 0.68, for spherical shaped elements of the same size and arranged without
order.
Relative density values computed from 3D images were
compared to the loaf density measured by the rapeseed
method. Loaf density values were estimated from images
by multiplying the relative density value by the solid material density. This density (Table 1) was estimated by the
additive rule:
X
1=qs
ci =qsi
where ci and qsi were respectively the concentration and the
density of each component our, water, sucrose and oil
included in the bread, water content being measured after
baking. A good agreement (r2 = 0.91) was found between
the two sets of density values (Tables 1 and 2). This result
suggests that, at least from the density point of view, the
measurements made by X-ray tomography at local scale
(sample  1 cm3), were representative of the whole crumb.

Cell size volumic distributions were computed by morphological granulometry using closing operator for each
bread (Fig. 8). In the present case, the cells were highly connected, so the size analysed by closing actually corresponded to their smallest dimension, i.e. their breadth in
3D. Smallest cell sizes (<2 mm) were observed for crumb
C and B and largest ones (13.5 mm) for samples A and
D1, which reached the largest size values. In addition, size
distribution was narrower for sample C and B than for
sample A and D1. Samples D2 and D3 displayed intermediate features. The mean cell size was computed from the
distributions (Table 2). Values varied between 1.5 mm for
samples D1 and A and 0.84 mm for sample C.
Volumic distributions of wall thickness have been calculated by morphological granulometry by opening. This
method analyses the smallest dimension of the wall corresponding to the thickness. The curves (Fig. 9) were somewhat similar, with a large peak around 200 lm, spreading
to 500 lm. Mean values of cell wall thickness were reported
in Table 2 and ranged between 0.19 for sample D1 and
0.25 lm for sample B. Relative density was inversely correlated (r2 = 0.86) to mean cell size (Table 2) and was not
correlated to wall size. The presence of large cells led to a
low relative density value of the 3D images. Wall sizes
did not vary signicantly from one bread to another. In
other words, and contrarily to the results obtained when
adding ingredients with tensioactive properties (Rouille
et al., 2005), no ne cellular structure could be obtained
for crumbs of low density, under our experimental
conditions.
Overall, the orders of magnitude were within the same
range as those found by Falcone et al. (2005) for cell wall
sizes but somewhat larger for cell sizes than those found
by Scanlon and Zghal (2001), both for pan bread. In the

Fig. 8. 3D granulometric distribution of the cell size of bread crumb samples.

N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

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Fig. 9. 3D granulometric distribution of the wall thickness of bread crumb samples.

last case, the dierence is in agreement with French bread


crumb, expected to be coarser.
4.3. Comparison between 2D and 3D analyses
Imaging in 2D corresponded to a macroscopic scale
allowing to observe whole bread slices while tomography
images described a 1 cm3 part of the sample with a higher
resolution (Fig. 1). 2D images were several cm large and
the resolution was 85 lm 85 lm per pixel while 3D images
were 700 700 700 lm3 large with 10 lm for voxel size.
For both scales, granulometric analyses were performed
by mathematical morphology to characterise cell and wall
size variations. In 2D, erosiondilation curves were
obtained for sizes ranging from 0.255 to 5.185 mm within
a frame of grey level texture analysis and without any segmentation steps. The principal components extracted from
these curves were interpreted as describing variations in cell
size for component 1 and cell heterogeneity and wall size for
component 2. In 3D, opening and closing were applied on
binary images leading to granulometric curves directly
interpretable as volumic distribution ranging from 0.040
to 4.320 mm for cells and from 0.040 to 0.840 mm for walls.
Mean size values were extracted from these curves.
The average scores of each type of bread obtained for
component 1, after 2D image analysis, were well correlated
to the 3D mean cell size (r2 = 0.86). For both sets of
images, samples A and D1 had larger cells and samples C
and B smaller cells than the others. However, dierences
for component 1, between samples D2 on one hand, and
B and D3 on the other hand are large with respect to the
values of mean cell size found by 3D analysis. Such lack
of t between the results obtained by the two techniques
can be due to several causes. A large variability was
observed on the similarity map assessed from 2D images

that was interpreted as heterogeneity in the axial direction,


caused by variability of crumb texture according to the
slice observed. This makes the average score for one type
of bread crumb somewhat imprecise. Another reason
may be explained by the dierent scales of observation of
the two techniques as illustrated in Fig. 1. Smaller cells
are nally taken into account in tomography that could
not be detected by the macroscopic 2D imaging technique
while larger cells were taken into account in the 2D scanning method.
The standard deviation of 3D granulometric curves was
not correlated with the second principal component
obtained from 2D images, although this component
described partly cell size heterogeneity. This result is not
surprising since heterogeneity at the macroscopic scale is
hardly comparable to the one dened at the local scale.
In addition, component 2 described also some variations
in macroscopic wall thickness in the 2D images. In the
3D images, mean wall thickness values varied between
0.19 and 0.25 mm and were not found highly dierent from
one image to the other. Such size values can hardly be characterised using the current 2D images for which the resolution was 85 lm. The large variability between slices of same
bread does not allow further interpretation.
In 3D, only a small (700 700 700 lm3) and localised
part of the bread was analysed. The strong correlation
between loaf density estimated by the rapeseed method
and the one estimated from 3D images could suggest that
the crumb densities were uniform. However, heterogeneities
were observed within the slices in 2D (Fig. 4). For example,
in sample C, large cells are scarcely observed here and there,
and smaller cells can be observed near the crust. In fact,
macroscopic variations of the density measured at the local
scale might be expected according to dierent processing
conditions, for instance the heating mode during baking

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N. Lassoued et al. / Food Research International 40 (2007) 10871097

(Sommier et al., 2005; Wagner et al., 2006). To address this


issue, the relation between local and macroscopic density
should be checked, for instance through an X-ray tomography of the cellular structure of samples taken at dierent
locations, core and periphery of the same slice.
Measures in 3D were obtained after segmentation of
cells making the granulometric measures directly interpretable compared to the textural approach developed for the
2D images obtained simply using a at bed scanner. The
agreement between 3D and 2D analyses suggests that one
may predict the average cell size of the bread crumb from
the knowledge of the rst component in the similarity
map of 2D granulometric curves. Building similarity maps
of bread from the grey level analyses of their images
requires building a set of reference bread spanning the
whole range of crumb variations that have to be taken into
account. Such information might in turn be used to calculate the mechanical properties of the crumb starting from
power law models (Zghal, Scanlon, & Sapirstein, 2002) or
nite element modelling approach (Babin et al., 2005).
5. Conclusion
Starting from breads prepared according to dierent
recipes, this study has shown that a 2D and 3D granulometric analysis by mathematical morphology is suitable
to characterise crumb grain. The 2D method associated
to a statistical treatment led to a similarity map with a classication of crumb grain according rst, to the neness
and, second, to the homogeneity of the macroscopic cell
size distribution, taking into account an apparent cell wall
thickness. 3D quantitative features of the cellular structure
of baked products have been determined from a sample
taken in the bread core. The comparison of the results
obtained by the two methods shows that the macroscopic
neness was well correlated to the mean cell size measured
at the local scale. This relation between a technique based
on 2D scanned images, quite fast, non-expensive and easy
to use, with a robust technique based on 3D high quality
images obtained by X-ray tomography opens prospects
for its use in industry quality control. In particular it can
be envisioned to build reference map of bread crumb variability from 2D images by including a larger set of bread
recipes and by taking into account several breads per recipe
and several slices per bread. A more accurate assessment of
the macroscopic heterogeneity has to be addressed in the
future works to better understand the texture and sensory
properties of baked products.
Acknowledgements
This work has been carried out in the frame of CANAL-Salve program from the French Ministery of Research within which partners contribution is gratefully
acknowledged. The authors are indebted to H. Chiron
(BIA) and to the sta of ESRF-beam line ID19 for their
excellent technical assistance. They are also grateful to

Science Computers Consultant (F42-St Etienne) and


CTCPA (F33-Auch) for nancial support of this study,
and respectively, Ch. David and I. Goullieux for helpful
discussions.
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