O Uso de uma Câmera de Celular como uma Ferramenta Analítica Rápida, Barata e Não Destrutiva para Quantificar o Teor de Sólidos Solúveis no Catchup

Resumo

The total soluble solids content (TSS) is an important parameter in the sensorial and nutritional quality of ketchup. This work developed a new method for determining soluble solids in ketchup using digital image processing. Visible images were acquired and processed using a smartphone, with refractometer analysis as the reference method. Samples were separated into calibration, validation, and prediction sets, then images were captured and inserted into the Redgim app. Preprocessing involved selecting regions of interest (ROI) and processing was done using partial least squares (PLS) regression. The latent variables were chosen by “leave one out” cross-validation based on the evaluation of the magnitude of calibration model prediction error (RMSECV). The predictive ability of the built model showed high prediction (R2 > 0.99) in the soluble solids content determination and low error (RMSEP < 0.55) in the prediction of new samples indicating that this is a fast, non-invasive, and cost-effective alternative to predict soluble solids content in ketchup.