2009 Asia-Pacific Conference on Information Processing
Classification of Beef Marbling by Image Processing
Liu Muhua, Shen Jie, Zhao Jinhui
College of Industry
Jiangxi Agricultural University
Nanchang, China
suikelmh@sina.com, a.sj615@163.com, zjhxiaocao@sina.com (corresponding author)
Abstract—The price of beef is determined by the carcass grade,
and beef grade usually evaluated subjectively based on
marbling level. It is a good method to determine marbling level
with computer vision instead of person. The method assessing
beef grade based on image processing was studied in this
paper.The image of longissimus dorsi muscle was segmented
using threshold, dilation and erosion, and the parameters of
marbling that extracted from dorsi muscle were described
using moment. The model predicting grade of marbling based
on suppot vector machine was obtained. The experiment
indicated that the predicting accuracy was 95.9%, 89.2%,
93.2%, 100% as grade 1, 2, 3, 4 respectively.
Keywords-beef; marbling; image processing; support vector
machine
I. INTRODUCTION
Beef carcass quality grading includes two aspects,
namely, marbling and physiological maturity degree.
Marbling refers to the quantity and distribution of fat in
muscles, which has deep relationship with tenderness,
juiciness and palatability, the effective determination site is
longissimus in the cross-section of eye muscle between the
12th and the 13th rib of cattle carcass. At present, the
evaluation of the beef carcass grading depends mainly on
discrimination of longissimus feature by people with the
naked eye. The United States, Canada, Japan and other
countries have their own raters of beef carcass grading. The
task of raters is to determine the level of the beef according
to grading standard of their own country and to label. The
work should be done at low temperature because of online
assessment, so the time of the judgement is requested as
short as possible. In the United States, the general production
line can obtain 200-400 carcasses per hour, therefore, raters
only have 9~18s to determine the carcass grade. The great
labour intensity for raters causes easily the misjudgment. The
misjudgment rate of the online raters of the United States
Department of Agriculture for beef carcass quality grading is
about 12%. In 1994, the international program congress of
instruments for beef evaluation proposed that the instrument
was adopted to evaluate objectively the beef quality grading,
and the detection of the beef using computer image was
considered as one of the best methods. With regard to the
pattern recognition method used in the quality grading, at
present, artificial neural network approach is mostly adopted,
but there existed over learning and local minimum problems
in such an approach, therefore, SVM is a better choice.
978-0-7695-3699-6/09 $25.00 © 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/APCIP.2009.138
The evaluation technology based on image processing of
beef carcass grading was first investigated by McDonald and
Chen[1,2], and the segmentation technology for longissimus
region in cross-section of eye muscle using mathematical
morphology method was studied. Gerrard etc.[3] applied
rapid structure marker algorithm to determine the structure
characteristics of longissimus, then this structure was used as
structure elements of mathematical morphology to remove
the non-longissimus region in the image, and RGB and Lab
color texture features were used to evaluate the level of
marbling. Kazuhiko, Fumito, etc.[4-6] investigated machine
vision detection of marbling grading using the methods of
the trip length statistics and marbling area, respectively. In
China, Ren Fazheng, Tu Kang, Liu Muhua and Zhao Jiewen,
etc.[7-10] preliminarily carryed out the related research. Ren
Fazheng, Tu Kang, etc.[7,8] extracted the beef marbling from
partial area of image selected artificially. LIU Mu-hua, Zhao
Jiewen[9,10] studied the automatic extraction methods about
the area of lingissimus in cross-section of eye muscle and
marbling. This study is a systematic research of automatic
extraction of marbling and grading technology.
II. TEST MATERIALS AND DEVICES
It is necessary to design the suitable light source for
quality inspection of agricultural and livestock products
using computer vision. Generally, there are much water and
oil on the beef surface which results in easily forming white
spots on its surface when light exposures to the beef surface,
in response, computer vision system for the beef carcass
quality inspection requires weak light intensity. This study
designs two sets of light source system based on light diffuse
(used in laboratories and workshops on-site respectively). It
can form a uniform diffuse reflection light, so images will
not form a white spot. Figure 1a for a digital camera
acquisition system (used in workshop at the scene), Figure
1b for the CCD camera acquisition system (used in
laboratory).
Experimental samples are taken from Jiangsu Ao Shida
Company and Anhui JinLai jose Beef Co., Ltd. There are
altogether 74 meat samples of beef eyeribs collected from 74
cattle respectively. Beef sample image is shown in Figure 2.
III. BEEF IMAGE PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY
The image processing technology for extracting marbling
includes: First of all, beef eyerib can be distinguished from
the whole image (including fat and muscle tissue); Secondly,
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 a.Capture system of camera b.Capture system of CCD camera
Figure 1 Capture system of beef image

Frequence
1. Fat; 2. Longissimus; 3. Mualce
Figure 2 Image of beef eyerib Figure 3 The grey histogram of R level

the effective site for judging ( that is longissimus) can be

separated from the fat , other muscle tissue and connective
tissue; then, the marbling is extracted. Thus the rich extent
and grading of the marbling can be judged. Based on this,
image processing technology in the study is divided into four
steps: the elimination of background images, the
segmentation of muscle and fat area in the image, the
extraction of the longissimjs region, the acquisition of
Figure 4 The grey image after removing background
marbling.
A. Elimination of image background and Segmentation of
eyerib image
In this study, the black background is removed from the
whole piece of beef according to the grey histogram of R
level of beef image using the OSTU method [10]. The grey
histogram of R level is shown in Figure 3 and the gray image
after removing background is shown in Figure 4 with white
background (255,255,255).After the removal of background,
1.Fat; 2. Muacle
muscle and fat region in beef eyerib need to be segmented.
Applying fuzzy clustering method based on fuzzy set theory Figure 5 Beef image after FCM segmentation
can improve the segmentation accuracy of image more
effectively. In this study, the method of Fuzzy c-means
clustering (FCM) is chosen to partition the fat and muscle
pixels of beef image[10]. After such treatment, muscle and fat
pixels are set at black and white, respectively, so Figure 4
after FCM segmentation is shown in Figure 5, and after
further processing of median filter and filling, the result is
shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6 Image after erosion and filling

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B. Segmentation of longissimus in ocular muscle characteristics pixels which has nothing to do with the size,
It was showed that longissimus and carnosity (the shape, direction of beef samples is selected as marbling
surrounding muscle tissue) is adherent to each other from image feature in this research. This feature can make
Figure 6, it is very hard to break up them because of their computer vision detection system have strong robustness.
similar structure and color. Although the shape of For digital image, (p + q) order geometric moment in the
longissimus in ocular muscle is irregular and its size varies two-dimensional function is defined as:
much, through the analysis, we can sum up some structure
features of its own: longissimus is the largest area in all
structures and its structure is largely similar to oval; instead, (p + q) order center moment in the two-dimensional function
carnosity(non-longissimus tissue) possesses smaller is defined as:
perimeter and size, and is separated from longissimus or with
"bridge" connection. These "bridges" can be corrosion off if
the method of iterative erosion operation of mathematical
Where: M 10 ,(
x = M 10 x , y ) is the centroid
morphology is used, if a "circular" structure element is used x =
M 10 M 00
to be continuously iterated corrosion, it is not only to make
"bridge" be corrosion off, but also to eliminate the carnosity coordinates, Central Moment represents translation
organization one by one according to the order from small to characteristics. M 00 stands for regional area in digital image.
big, longissimus will be the last one to be corroded off. Two-dimensional function (p + q) order central moment of
Therefore, when there is only one area left in the whole beef digital image is defined as:
image (the area will disappear after the next step), the
circular structure element at this time can find the largest
region in image. This circular structure element can get the η and η 02 is moment of inertia which comes into
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longissimus after the erosion processing to the region. The being when regional intensity revolves around the vertical
process is shown in figure 7. After the above segmentation axis and horizontal axis through grey gravity, respectively.
steps, marbling can be extracted furtherly from longissimus η η
(marbling is the fat in longissimus). The XLD image of The amplitude of 30 and 03 can be used to measure
longissimus with marbling information can be obtained symmetry of objects for the vertical axis and horizontal axis ,
(Figure 8) after carrying out an operation between YLD image respectively.
obtained by morphological operations and X image of beef μ η pq (p + q + 2)
Let pq = (η ) , r= , several absolute invariant
'
2
after preprocessing . 00

which are unchanged for the changes of displacement, scale

and rotation can be obtained after a series of algebraic
identity transform.

Figure 7 The sketch of erosion processing

V. SVM CLASSIFICATION METHOD OF BEEF

Figure 8 Image of longissimus Figure 9 Image of marbling
IV. FEATURE EXTRACTION OF MARBLING
Beef carcass raters are mainly to determine the rich
extent of fat including the number and size of fat in every
direction and the uniformity of the distribution of fat granule
when they observe marbling with the eye. It is found that the
size and marbling of beef samples are quite different when
the actual situation of beef production enterprises is
investigated. Even if the marbling is the same level and the
different size of the sample, its marbling granule is also quite
different. Therefore, gray moment characteristics of image
MARBLING
Basic SVM algorithm is aimed at two types of
classification, many types of SVM classifier need to be
constructed for multi-category pattern recognition problem.
There are two ways: 
ķ A "one-to-many" algorithm. For N types of problem, N
types of SVM classifier need to be constructed. Training set
in class i is served as positive training samples in i SVM,
while the remaining samples are served as a negative training
set.
ĸA "one-to-one" algorithm. For N types of problem, all
possible classifiers with 2 types need to be constructed, each
classifier only chooses 2 kinds from N kinds of training
samples for training and N (N - 1) / 2 classifiers need be
constructed. If these classifiers are assembled and the voting
method is used, the class with the most votes will be the
class of sample.

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 In this study, support vector machine classifier based on
torque in the light of "one-to-many" algorithm is set up.
Structural parameters of SVM: kernel function is the radial
basis function, misclassification penalties constant C =
100.Taking the moment feature of the image M1, M2, I1 as
the input parameters, the training results of the test samples
is shown in table 1.
Table 1 The results of testing
Marbling grade Sample SVM Accuracy/% Cross accuracy/%
1 24 11 95.9 85.1
2 20 28 89.2 63.5
3 15 34 93.2 73.0
4 15 23 100.0 75.5
This study applies cross effectiveness to validate whether
the model is reasonable: it is supposed that the sample point
collection contains t samples. First of all, the sample point i
(i = 1, 2, 3,..., t-1, t) is removed, t-1 samples is used to set up
the model, and sample points is used as test samples. Then,
accuracy rate of model is calculated after eliminating the
sample points i(i=1ˈ2ˈ3,Ăˈt-1ˈt) one by one. The
minimum of these accuracy rates is called cross-tested
accuracy rate which is shown in table 1. It can clearly be
seen that SVM classifier model based on the moment has
better generalization performance.
VI. CONCLUSION
The method of machine vision detection for beef marbling
grading was studied in this research, and the conditions of
designing online detection device for beef grading were
provided. In this study, image processing methods can
extract marbling from eyerib images accurately and
efficiently. Marbling features extracted by moment method
can reflect the size, number and spatial distribution of fat
granule, and gray torque characteristics of image
characteristics pixels which have nothing to do with the size,
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shape, direction of beef samples can be used as marbling
image feature. This feature can make computer vision
detection system have strong robustness. Pattern recognition
model for marbling grading is set up based on SVM method.
The predicting accuracy was 95.9%ˈ89.2%, 93.2%ˈ100%
as grade 1, 2, 3, 4 respectively. Besides, SVM classifier
model based on the torque has better generalization
performance.
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