Detecting Myopathic Chicken Breast Using Hyperspectral Imaging

Scientists from the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) in Monells, Spain used hyperspectral imaging to characterize chicken breasts with myopathies. Their findings were published in Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy (1).

fresh chicken breast raw | Image Credit: © topntp - stock.adobe.com

Myopathies are diseases that affect the muscles controlling voluntary movement (2). These can primarily affect chicken breast, leading to abnormal texture, impaired quality, and decreased consumer acceptance. Exertional myopathy can stem from overly strenuous muscular exercise, with deep pectoral myopathy and capture myopathy being the main examples of myopathy in birds (3). The most notorious types of myopathies include wooden breast (WB), characterized by a hardening of the muscle tissue, caused by the necrosis of the muscle fibers and subsequent thickening of the connective tissue; spaghetti meat (SM), characterized by a dismemberment of the muscle fibers due to a weakening of the connective tissue; and white striping (WS), characterized by fatty infiltrations that manifest as white striations across the muscle. These conditions can complicate poultry industry operations and may lead to substantial economic losses and increasing food waste. Typical methods for myopathy detection can be subjective and time-consuming; as such, there is a need for objective and efficient analytical techniques with potential for being implemented into work lines.

Hyperspectral imaging (HIS) is viewed as a powerful tool for assessing food quality, offering rapid and non-destructive analysis of diverse attributes. Some studies investigating chicken breasts with WB with this technique have found differences in protein content and water mobility on the near infrared (NIR) range (4). With the IRTA study, two experiments were done to evaluate the feasibility of visible and near-infrared (VIS-NIR) HIS to discriminate between myopathies and assess their evolution during refrigerated storage. Hyperspectral images of 98 and 77 chicken breasts, for experiment #1 and #2, respectively, were analyzed, dividing the breasts into three regions to precisely assign them to have either a myopathy or the absence of one. Support vector machine models were employed for classification.

Differences between myoglobin content and water binding detected in the VIS-NIR range (386–1016 nm) proved relevant to the point where researchers could accurately discriminate between myopathies (76.1% accuracy), especially spaghetti meat (94.0 % balanced accuracy). They also successfully discriminated between storage days, detecting spoilage through spectral myoglobin isoform fingerprints (99.3% accuracy) in the short-wave NIR region (800–1015 nm). Spectral changes during refrigeration storage displayed successive myoglobin oxidation, but there were limited differences between myopathies, possibly due to limitations in sample size. Further, different degradation over time depending on myopathic conditions cannot be assumed. With that in mind, the short-wave NIR region has been deemed most informative when determining changes during storage, causing high performances alongside a narrow wavelength range.

Overall, these findings show that HIS systems can potentially be used industrially as online, non-destructive automatic sensors to sort chicken breasts based on their quality, all while simultaneously enabling evolution predictions for their sensory traits. This can allow for tailored destinations and mitigate potential food waste.

References

(1) Muñoz-Laperia, M.; Wold, J. P.; Jofré, A.; et al. Visible Near-Infrared Hyperspectral Imaging as a Tool to Characterise Chicken Breasts with Myopathies and Their Durability. Spectrochim. Acta – A: Mol. Biomol. Spectrosc. 2025, 335, 125954. DOI: 10.1016/j.saa.2025.125954

(2) Myopathy. Cedars Sinai 2025. https://www.cedars-sinai.org/health-library/diseases-and-conditions/m/myopathy.html (accessed 2025-3-4)

(3) Van Wettere, A. J. Exertional Myopathy in Poultry. Merck Manual Veterinary Manual 2024. https://www.merckvetmanual.com/poultry/myopathies/exertional-myopathy-in-poultry (accessed 2025-3-4)

(4) Wold, J. P.; Veiseth-Kent, E.; Høst, V.; Løvland, A. Rapid On-Line Detection and Grading of Wooden Breast Myopathy in Chicken Fillets by Near-Infrared Spectroscopy. PLoS One 2017, 12 (3), e0173384. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0173384