Towards optimal fillet portioning: a computer vision system for determining the fish fillet volume

Abstract

Portioning large fish fillets for packaging is usually performed manually by skilled workers. Automating this process and obtaining packaged products with attractive shapes and affordable weights will be beneficial for promoting purchase decisions. Towards developing an automated fish fillet portioning system, this study investigated a computer vision approach for determining the fillet volume. A belt conveyor would transport a fish fillet to the image capture booth, where its cross-section areas would be calculated for volume determination. The developed system could be operated with a conveyor speed ranging from 7.5 to 30.6 mm/s. The system performance was evaluated at a conveyor speed of 7.5 mm/s using small catfish fillets from 142.2 to 225.4 cm3. A mean percent error of 9.2% was observed, and the smallest percent error of 3.8% was obtained with a 225.4 cm3 fillet. With minor measurement errors obtained for larger fillets, the proposed computer vision system showed great potential for developing a cost-effective automated system for customized fish fillet partitioning to accelerate purchase decisions and also for quality control and classification of the fish fillets.