Nondestructive Estimation of Lean Meat Yield of South Korean Pig Carcasses Using Machine Vision Technique

In this paper, we report the development of a nondestructive prediction model for lean meat percentage (LMP) in Korean pig carcasses and in the major cuts using a machine vision technique. A popular vision system in the meat industry, the VCS2000 was installed in a modern Korean slaughterhouse, and the images of half carcasses were captured using three cameras from 175 selected pork carcasses (86 castrated males and 89 females). The imaged carcasses were divided into calibration (n=135) and validation (n=39) sets and a multilinear regression (MLR) analysis was utilized to develop the prediction equation from the calibration set. The efficiency of the prediction equation was then evaluated by an independent validation set. We found that the prediction equation - developed to estimate LMP in whole carcasses based on six variables - was characterized by a coefficient of determination ($R^2_v$) value of 0.77 (root-mean square error [RMSEV] of 2.12%). In addition, the predicted LMP values for the major cuts: ham, belly, and shoulder exhibited $R^2_v$ values${\geq}0.8$ (0.73 for loin parts) with low RMSEV values. However, lower accuracy ($R^2_v=0.67$) was achieved for tenderloin cuts. These results indicate that the LMP in Korean pig carcasses and major cuts can be predicted successfully using the VCS2000-based prediction equation developed here. The ultimate advantages of this technique are compatibility and speed, as the VCS2000 imaging system can be installed in any slaughterhouse with minor modifications to facilitate the on-line and real-time prediction of LMP in pig carcasses.