Speaker
Description
Neutron imaging has rapidly become a powerful technique across many scientific fields, offering unique contrast for light elements and hydrogenous materials through methods such as conventional radiography and tomography, grating interferometry, and wavelength-resolved imaging. While neutron scattering is widely established in food science, the community has only begun to exploit the diverse opportunities and contrast modalities that neutron imaging can provide.
This contribution reviews notable examples where neutron imaging delivered non-destructive insight into complex food systems. Applications include water migration during drying, moisture redistribution in meat during cooking, microstructure of extruded Spirulina–starch foams, water distribution in bread related to shelf life, and freeze-drying dynamics. These studies demonstrate the method’s ability to probe hydrogen-rich phases under realistic thermal and humidity conditions.
Opportunities emerging from new contrast modalities will be discussed, including dark-field imaging, wavelength-resolved imaging enabling thermography, selected deuteration, and multimodal neutron–X-ray tomography, which all remain underexplored in food research. Advanced analysis using Digital Volume Correlation offers new ways to quantify internal movements and material transport in food systems and processing.
Selected References: Defraeye (2013, 2015); Scussat (2016); Mannes (2016); Martínez-Sanz (2020); Vorhauer-Huget (2020); Hilmer (2024).