Turning bites into bytes: Teagasc research goes into virtual reality

It may sound like something from a sci-fi movie but Teagasc, Ireland’s agriculture and food development authority, has developed unique new virtual reality technology which allows users to “walk around” inside foods to analyse their internal structures.

Already, Teagasc researchers have used it to get inside bread to examine its structures and see how they relate to sensory and texture attributes. It has also been used to digitally recreate a lamb carcass with the researchers able to move around inside it and take measurements using hand held instruments.

Using virtual reality in this way is a world first and its non-destructive nature is enabling researchers at Teagasc to continually re-analyse structures with unlimited observations and viewpoints within the same food sample.

"We have been studying the structural properties of food for many years," says Deirdre Kennedy, microstructure technologist at Teagasc Food Research Centre Moorepark.

“We do a lot of work on food structure in general. It is very important as it relates to many properties in food and how different ingredients interact with each other.”

Structural importance

Meat is one example. The structure of the fresh and processed meat has a direct impact on sensory properties, such as texture, flavour, juiciness and visual appeal. Production processes and their interaction with the meat have an effect on meat structure and ultimate product quality.

Structural information can be captured and used to predict eating quality of both fresh and processed meats.

Bread is another. Why does gluten free bread not taste the same as the standard equivalent? The answer may well lie in the structure.

“Digital technology has now come into it,” says Kennedy. “We wanted to do something that had never done before. We found some very advanced software that hadn’t been applied to food before, but we knew we could use it.”

She explains that conventional methods involve either slicing up foods and putting them under microscopes or using x-ray and other images to build up 3D images which are projected on a screen. However, when these images are projected, we actually see them in 2D and our brains have to conceptualise them as 3D objects.

Teagasc has taken this a step further and moved into the 4D or virtual reality world. “We use CT scanning to get the 4D data,” says Kennedy. “There are other imaging technologies, but we use CT scanning as it provides images of very thin slices of the food and gives us the most detailed picture of the structure. The software is very clever and can handle very large datasets very quickly to turn it into 3D images. We couple those with gaming software which is standard for virtual reality applications. It works with Oculus and projects it into virtual reality allowing you to look inside the food structure.”

She gives another example of the power of the technology. “We used it to look at a milk powder particle. We got nano-CT scans done by a company in the US. For the first time could see structures like airholes on the surface. We can walk around it and look at its precise shape. We can see what’s on the surface and what’s inside.”

Complete image

Creating digital models like this has distinct examples over conventional laboratory methods which involve slicing up samples or adding dyes to them. “You are always worried that this will have some impact on the structure or that there will be a chemical reaction of some kind. It also allows you to work with the full sample and not just a slice of it.”

Cheese is a case in point. Conventional techniques would see three samples being taken from a block. There is no guarantee that these will be representative of the structure throughout the block. “We can now visualise the whole block,” says Kennedy.

“Also, Swiss type cheese has holes in it which are created by gas producing bacteria. We can see if they are doing their job. We can look at milk powder and see how water might channel through it.”

The application of this ground-breaking new technology is wide ranging. It has the potential to transform our understanding of the link between sensory parameters and the physics of food structure, potentially leading to new manufacturing practices, food products and customer experiences. Furthermore, it will enable food manufacturers to identify key structural components and benchmark them against existing high-quality foods in order to deliver a consistent experience to consumers.