Measurement of bubble size distributions in extruded food products

A technique for measuring the bubble size distribution in puffed extruded products from cross-sectional images is presented. A suitable edge discrimination routine together with an algorithm for detecting holes (which may have incomplete boundaries) are described. The actual bubble size distribution can be inferred from the distribution observed in the cross-sectional slices by a deconvolution procedure. Application results of this method to several extruded products are presented.