A novel approach to the study of bread porous structure: Phase-contrast x-ray microtomography

The evaluation of bread quality can be carried out by performing a nondestructive investigation of its microstructure, which in turn can be performed by adapting image analysis techniques that enables one to obtain rapid, objective, and quantitative information. A suitable and reliable experimental methodology to investigate the porous structure of bread by means of the numerical image processing, and without any sample preparation, has been presented in this work. Different types of breads having varying degrees of porosity were studied by X-ray computerized phase-sensitive microtomography for the acquisition of digital high-resolution images. After acquisition, suitable numeric algorithms were applied to slice reconstruction. Finally, 3D images were rendered and analyzed.