Food Sci. Technol. Res.

, 19 (5), 795 – 804, 2013

Detecting Surface Cracks on Dates Using Color Imaging Technique

S. Al-Rahbi1, A. Manickavasagan1, R. Al-Yahyai2, L. Khriji3 and P. Alahakoon1

1
Department of Soils, Water and Agricultural Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, PO 34, Al-Khoud, PC 123 Sultanate of Oman
2
Department of Crop Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, PO 34, Al-Khoud, PC 123 Sultanate of Oman
3
Department Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, PO 34, Al-Khoud, PC 123 Sultanate of Oman

Received March 16, 2013; Accepted June 26, 2013

Surface or external qualities of fresh and dried fruits are the important factors in determining the
consumer acceptability. An automated and objective method to detect the surface defects on fruits would
be highly beneficial in handling and processing facilities. The objective of this study was to determine the
efficiency of a computer vision system with RGB color camera to detect the surface cracks on dates. Three
grades of dates (no-crack dates, low-crack dates and high-crack dates) were obtained from two commer-
cial dates processing factories in Oman. After the confirmation of grade standards by a dates-quality-
expert, the samples were imaged individually using a color camera (105 dates in each grade). Eleven
features were extracted from each image and used in classification models. Red, hue and value intensities
of three grades of dates were significantly different from each other. In a three classes model, the classifi-
cation accuracy was 62%, 58% and 78% for high-crack, low-crack and no-crack dates, respectively using
linear discriminant analysis (LDA). LDA yielded a classification accuracy of 88% and 75% for the dates
with-crack and without-crack, respectively in a two classes model. In pairwise discrimination, the highest
classification (96%) was achieved between high-crack and no-crack dates, and the lowest accuracy (59%)
was between low-crack and high-crack dates.

Keywords: image processing, dates, surface crack, color imaging

Introduction
Guaranteed quality assurance is required to improve the
marketability of fresh and dried fruits in domestic and inter-
national markets. In handling facilities, most of the surface
qualities of fruits are determined by human graders. Manual
inspection or grading of fruits is a highly subjective method,
and the accuracy is determined by various factors such as
lighting condition, experience and skill level of the graders,
mental stress of the graders and so on. Image processing
or computer vision technique is becoming popular for the
objective measurement of various internal and external at-
tributes of food products. In this method, the image of the
object is acquired by a camera and analyzed by a computer
and other devices in order to obtain useful information. Du
and Sun (2006) mentioned that computer vision technique
can help to improve the production efficiency and reduce the
production cost.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed.
E-mail: manick@squ.edu.om
Date palm is one of the oldest plants in the world and its
fruit is marked as subsistence and nutritious food in most of
the desert areas especially GCC countries i). In Oman, the
date palm trees represent about 82% of the total fruit crop
and occupy around 49% of the total agricultural land (Al-
Yahyai and Al-Khanjari, 2008). Oman produces an average
of 268,011 tonnes per year and it is ranked as the eighth larg-
est date producer in the world ii). Although the production is
high, the annual export from Oman is less than 10,000 tones
(Al-Rawahi et al., 2005). This low export could be due to
the poor quality of the processed and packaged dates (Al-
Marshudi, 2002). Date quality is based on color, size and ab-
sence of defects or damages (Ait-Oubahou and Yahia, 1999).
According to CODEX standard, the allowance of defects in
dates is ranging from 1 to 7% by count, depending on the
type of the defect. In USA Standards for dates, the “absence
of defects” criteria weighs 30 points in a 100 points quality
score sheet (Kader and Hussein, 2009).
‘Crack’ is one type of surface defects which appear as
minute breaks in the cuticle and epidermal cells. These
796
cracks form in transverse, longitudinal or irregular direc-
tions around the fruit and their abundance and shape differ
in various verities (Zaid, 2002). The highly cracked dates
will have hard and dry skin which consequently will reduce
the quality and the commercial value of the dates (Qanawi,
2005). Palevsky et al. (2004) reported that sometimes, the
cracked dates are not even preferred by birds. The reasons
for these cracks on dates may be due to the old world date
mite (Qanawi, 2005) or wet weather (Zaid, 2002). Old world
date mite or Goubar mite (Oligonychus afrasiaticus) causes
the most significant damage to the date (Knihinicki and
Flechtmann, 1999), because it cuts the skin and feeds from
the fruit, causing a stiff surface with some cracks (Qanawi,
2005). The second probable reason for crack formation on
dates is high humidity caused by wet weather coupled with
rain (Zaid, 2002).
At present, in date processing industries and handling
facilities the dates with cracks are identified and removed by
manual inspection method, which is laborious, inconsistent,
less efficient and expensive. Besides, there is no standard
method to estimate the extent of spread of these cracks on
dates, or their percentage cover.
Hence, there is a necessity to develop an objective meth-
od to estimate the amount of cracks present on a date fruit,
which could be used as a detection tool in handling, process-
ing and packaging facilities.
Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine
the efficiency of a computer vision system with RGB color
camera to detect the surface cracks on dates.
Although computer vision techniques are used for de-
termination of qualities such as varietal purity, color and
maturity in dates (Thomas et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2008), no
published work is available for detection of surface cracks.
However, this technique has been used to discriminate sur-
face defects in other fruits. Aleixos et al. (2002) used RGB
and monochrome camera along with an infrared filter to
identify surface defects in citrus. The developed system was
able to correctly classify 93% of lemon samples, and 94% of
mandarin samples. Blasco et al. (2009) identified 11 types
of external defects on citrus fruit with a success accuracy of
86% using visible, florescent and NIR imaging. A multivari-
ate color image analysis was used by Lopez et al. (2010) to
Fig. 1. Images of date samples.
S. Al-Rahbi et al.
detect surface defects of oranges and mandarins with 94.2%
classification accuracy. Blasco et al. (2007) tested the effect
of NIR, ultraviolet and florescence details along with the vis-
ible information for the detections of surface defects in citrus
fruits. Addition of NIR information to color images improved
the detection of anthracnose defect from 86% to 95%. Simi-
larly detection efficiency of green mold was increased from
65% to 95% while adding florescence information to RGB
information. The surface blemishes on oranges, peaches and
apples were determined at an accuracy of 86% using RGB
images by Blasco et al. (2003). NIR imaging technique was
successfully used to detect the surface defects of rotating
apple (Pink Lady variety) with 92% accuracy (Bennedsen
et al., 2005). Although computer vision technique has been
tested and used for various surface defects identification in
fresh fruits, the research on dried fruits is limited.
Materials and Methods
Sample collection ‘Khalas’ and ‘Naeem’ varieties of
dates are most commonly affected with cracks (Personal
Communication with Mr. Yaqoub Al-Siabi, Owner and Man-
ager of Samail Date Factory, Oman). As ‘Khalas’ variety is
one of the most commercially produced dates, this variety
was selected and tested in this study. Date samples of ‘Kha-
las’ variety were collected from Samail Dates Factory in Al-
Dakiliah Region and Bright Sun Dates Factory in Al-Batinah
Region of Sultanate of Oman. The samples received from
these two factories were mixed together. Three grades of
dates (high-crack, low-crack and no-crack) were extracted
from the conglomerated samples. The graded samples were
confirmed by a date-quality- expert. A total of 315 dates (105
dates in each grade) were used for imaging and further analy-
sis. Fig. 1 shows the images of date sample in each grade.
Image acquisition The images of the date samples were
captured using a color camera (model: EOS 550D, Canon
INC., Japan) with a resolution of 5184 × 3456 pixels. The
camera was calibrated by customizing the white balance us-
ing a gray card (model: Digital Gray Kard XL, DGK Color
Tools, USA) with 18% reflectance (Valous et al., 2009; Pe-
dreschi et al., 2006). The camera was located at 15 cm above
the sample platform.
Two fluorescent lights of 36W power (model: Dulux L,
Detecting Crack on Dates Using Color Imaging
OSRAM, Italy) was used to illuminate the samples. The
lights were maintained to be parallel to the sample platform.
This orientation reduced the reflection of light on the sample
surface without losing the needed details of cracks.
A cardboard box was used to cover the whole setup
including the camera and the lights, to avoid any back scat-
tering effect (Mendoza and Aguilera, 2004). The inner side
of the box was covered with black paper to reduce the re-
flectance (Mendoza and Aguilera, 2004) and the ceiling was
covered with white paper to scatter the light and minimize
the shadow effects (Al-Ohali, 2011). A white background
was used to provide higher contrast between the background
and the date sample. The camera was connected to the USB
port of a computer (Hewlett-Packard, Pentium(R) Dual-Core
CPU 2.30 GHz) which contained remote shooting software
EOS Utility (version 2.8.1.0, Canon INC, Japan) through
which digital images were acquired. The images were stored
as JPEG format and each image contained one date sample.
The sample was manually oriented so that the side with the
highest cracked region was facing the camera.
Image analysis The acquired images were analyzed
using Matlab software (version 7.6.0.324, Mathwork INC.,
USA). The object was segmented from the background us-
ing Otsu threshold method. Since the color of the cracks was
different from the color of the normal date skin, mainly color
based features were extracted. The extracted features and
their descriptions are given in Table 1. The HSV components
were normalized (0 to 1) automatically while converting
RGB to HSV format in Matlab.
Apart from color features, the crack area (number of pix-
els occupied by cracks) and the percentage of crack area on
the surface of dates would be beneficial in classifying dates
according to the amount of cracks. Therefore crack area and
percentage of crack area were calculated using 2 methods: a.
Fig. 2. Calculating crack area using threshold method.
797
Table 1. Features extracted from the segmented date images.
Feature Description
Gray-Intensity mean intensity of grayscale image
Red-Intensity mean intensity of red component
Green-Intensity mean intensity of green component
Blue-Intensity mean intensity of blue component
Hue-Intensity mean intensity of hue component, which is
the dominant wavelength on the color
(Solomon and Breckon, 2010)
Saturation-Intensity mean intensity of saturation component,
which is the color purity
(Solomon and Breckon, 2010)
Value-Intensity mean intensity of value component, which
is the color brightness
(Solomon and Breckon, 2010)
Crack_Area_threshold area extracted by threshold
Crack_Area_mask area extracted by combining HSV masks
Crack_Area_threshold% percentage of the area extracted by thresh-
old over the total area of the object (dates)
Crack_Area_mask% percentage of the area extracted by com-
bining HSV masks over the total area of
the object (dates)
threshold method b. HSV mask method.
a)Threshold method In this method a threshold value
was used to separate the crack area from date surface. Five
random images were selected from each grade (high-crack
and low-crack), and converted into its HSV-format. Then,
the intensity of the Value component for the crack region
was measured using data cursor tool in Matlab. The obtained
mean intensity of Value component for crack region was 0.45.
Then this value was used as threshold value to separate the
crack area from the surface of all the dates images. Finally,
the crack area was calculated by counting the pixels covering
the foreground area in the thresholded image. The operation-
al procedures in this method are shown in Fig. 2.
b)HSV mask method In this method, intensity range of
798
Hue, Saturation and Value components were used to separate
the crack area from date surface. Five random images were
selected from each grade (high-crack and low-crack) and
converted into its HSV-format. Then, the intensity range of
Hue, Saturation and Value components for the crack region
was measured using data cursor tool in Matlab. The obtained
values for Hue, Saturation and Value components were 0.03
− 0.07, 0.49 − 0.60 and 0.45 − 0.65, respectively. These val-
ues were used as mask to separate the crack area from the
surface of all the dates images in each component. Then,
the three masks were combined with “&” logical operator
and used to separate the final crack area. Finally, the crack
area was calculated by counting the pixels covering the fore-
ground area of the yielded mask. The operational procedures
in this method are shown in Fig. 3.
Fig. 3. Calculating crack area using HSV masks method.
S. Al-Rahbi et al.
In both methods, the percentage crack area was calcu-
lated as:
Percentage crack area = (number of pixels occupied by cracks
/ total number of pixels occupied by the date sample) × 100
Classification model Linear Discriminant Analysis
(LDA) was used as classification model using SPSS software
(version 20, IBM). Two types of classification models were
used in this study:
a) Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA): In this analysis, all
the extracted features were used for the classification.
b) Stepwise LDA: In stepwise analysis, only selected fea-
tures (based on their contribution to classification) were
used for the classification.
For the both procedures, the classification accuracy was ob-
Detecting Crack on Dates Using Color Imaging 799

tained by a leave-one-out cross validation method (Manicka-
vasagan et al., 2008).
Results and Discussion
Feature extraction
a)Color features The extracted color features of three
grades of dates are shown in Table 2. The red, hue and value
intensities of three grades were significantly different from
each other. But there is no difference in gray and green in-
tensities of low-crack and no-crack dates. The saturation in-
tensity of high-crack and low-crack dates was similar. There
was no difference in Blue-Intensity between three grades of
dates.
b)Crack area features
Threshold method The representative images of date
samples in each grade after applying threshold algorithm
are shown in Fig. 4. In all images, the effect of edge was
also treated as the crack area. While attempting to eliminate
this edge effect using average filter, many crack area details
were eliminated. In addition to the edge effect, the color of
the delaminated section on date’s surface had similar color
intensity with cracks and therefore reported as crack area in
threshold images (Fig. 5). In some date samples, the nature
of date surface was glossy, which made it highly reflective
and giving rise to brighter areas similar to cracks. Table 3
explains the crack area and percentage of cracks on dates.
Although the crack area percentage in no-crack dates was
expected to be zero, it was calculated as 8.24% due to edge
and delamination effects.
HSV mask method This approach eliminated some
of the problems such as edges, high reflection areas, faced
in threshold method. However, the skin delamination was
still considered as cracks in this method (Figs. 6 and 7).
The crack area percentage for the no-crack dates has been
reduced to 2.62 because of the elimination of the edge and
high reflection effects. Fig. 8 explains the interference of
delamination with cracks in no-crack dates. The crack area
calculated using mask method was 0.2% and 15.5%, for the
no-crack dates without and with delamination, respectively.
Thus, the skin delamination was the most difficult challenge
in detecting cracks area.
Classification models The extracted features were used

Table 2. Color features of three grades of dates (n = 105 in each grade).

Grade
Feature
high-crack low-crack no-crack
Gray-Intensity 77.01a* ± 12.24** 73.17b ± 11.25 70.67b ± 13.79
Red-Intensity 101.95a ± 15.55 98.22b ± 15.13 93.77c ± 17.31
Green-Intensity 68.26a ± 11.85 64.00b ± 10.65 61.75b ± 13.62
Blue-Intensity 55.56a ± 6.83 54.19a ± 6.57 55.98a ± 11.68
Hue-Intensity 0.18a ± 0.10 0.23b ± 0.14 0.38c ± 0.17
Saturation-Intensity 0.44a ± 0.05 0.45a ± 0.06 0.42b ± 0.06
Value-Intensity 0.40a ±0.06 0.39b ± 0.06 0.37c ± 0.07

* values with same letters in a row are not significantly different (α = 0.05).
** standard deviation.

Fig. 4. Crack area extracted from images of three grades using threshold method.
800 S. Al-Rahbi et al.

Fig. 5. Challenges in recognizing cracks area while using threshold method.

Table 3. Crack area on three grades of dates (n = 105 in each grade).

Grade
Feature
high-crack low-crack no-crack
Crack_Area_threshold 675807a* ± 228092** 464912b ± 178090 258669c ± 106853
Crack_Area_mask 296906a ± 140824 191983b ± 121203 83143c ± 80670
Crack_Area_threshold% 16.25a ± 4.83 12.37b ± 4.18 8.24c ± 3.16
Crack_Area_mask% 7.09a ± 3.05 5.09b ± 3.02 2.62c ± 2.33

*values with same letters in a row are not significantly different (α = 0.05).
**standard deviation.

Fig. 6. Crack area extracted from images of three grades using HSV mask method.
Detecting Crack on Dates Using Color Imaging 801

Fig. 7. Challenges in recognizing cracks area while using HSV mask method.

Fig. 8. Cracks area extracted by HSV mask method in dates without crack.

to discriminant the date images using three different classifi-
cation approaches:
i) Three classes model (high-crack, low-crack and no-crack)
ii) Two classes model (with-crack and without-crack)
iii) Pairwise classification
i) Three classes model The contribution of each feature
in the classification of dates based on surface cracks is given
in Table 4. The lowest value of Wilks’ lambda indicates the
lowest error and the highest contribution of the feature in
classification and vice versa (Hupse and Karssemeijer, 2010).
The features directly related to crack area contributed more
in classification (top 4) than color intensities. Among R, G, B
color values, Green component ranked top in term of contri-
bution to classification. This may be depending on the nature
of defect and variety of dates. For example, Wulfsohn et al.
(1989) reported that Green component was the most effec-
tive color component in detecting defective dates in Zahidi
variety and Red component in Majhul variety.
The classification results obtained from the LDA and
802 S. Al-Rahbi et al.

Table 4. Ranking of features on the basis of their level Table 6. Ranking of features on the basis of their level
of contribution to classification in three classes model. of contribution to classification in two classes model.

Rank Feature Wilks’ Lambda Rank Feature Wilks’ Lambda

1 Crack_Area_threshold 0.520 1 Crack_Area_threshold 0.643
2 Crack_Area_threshold% 0.611 2 Crack_Area_threshold% 0.702
3 Crack_Area_mask 0.640 3 Crack_Area_mask 0.727
4 Crack_Area_mask% 0.702 4 Hue-Intensity 0.739
5 Hue-Intensity 0.718 5 Crack_Area_mask% 0.762
6 Saturation-Intensity 0.947 6 Saturation-Intensity 0.948
7 Green-Intensity 0.952 7 Value-Intensity 0.967
8 Gray-Intensity 0.958 8 Red-Intensity 0.967
9 Value -Intensity 0.958 9 Green-Intensity 0.972
10 Red-Intensity 0.958 10 Gray-Intensity 0.973
11 Blue-Intensity 0.989 11 Blue-Intensity 0.995

Table 5. Classification accuracies (%) of dates in three classes Table 7. Classification accuracies (%) of dates in two classes
model. model.

To To Overall
From Overall From
high-crack low-crack no-crack with-crack without-crack %

high-crack 61.9 36.2 1.9 with-crack 88.1 11.9

LDA 83.8%
LDA low-crack 19.0 58.1 22.9 66.0 without-crack 24.8 75.2
no-crack 1.0 21.0 78.1
Stepwise with-crack 89.5 10.5
84.4%
high-crack 63.8 34.3 1.9 LDA without-crack 25.7 74.3
Stepwise
low-crack 18.1 60.0 21.9 67.3
LDA
no-crack 0.0 21.9 78.1

Stepwise LDA with leave-one-out validation method are

presented in Table 5.The maximum misclassification was
from high-crack to low-crack (34 to 36%) and the minimum
misclassification was from no-crack to high-crack (0 to 1%).
The overall classification accuracy of LDA was 66%.
The stepwise LDA took four steps and one feature was
added in each step. Crack_Area_threshold, Hue-Intensity, Satu-
ration-Intensity and Crack_Area_threshold% were entered in the
stepwise analysis. While using the Stepwise LDA, the over-
all classification accuracy has slightly improved to 67.3%.
ii) Two classes model In this approach, the images of
high-crack and low-crack dates were mixed together and
treated as dates with-crack. The cracked dates were discrimi-
nated against dates without-crack. The ranking of features
based on contribution for classification in this approach is
given in Table 6. In both approaches (3 classes model and 2 Fig. 9. Classification accuracies during pairwise classification.
classes model), same features were ranked in the top 5 based
on their contribution to classification. However the Wilks’ lamination might have been misclassified as dates with-crack.
Lambda values were increased in the two classes model. The stepwise LDA performed in five steps and Crack_
The classification accuracies in two classes model are pre- Area_ threshold, Hue-Intensity, Saturation-Intensity, Crack_
sented in Table 7. The overall classification accuracy yielded Area_ threshold% and Green-Intensity were entered into the
by LDA was 83.8%. The classification accuracy of with-crack analysis. The used features in the stepwise classification of
class (88.1%) was higher than accuracy of without-crack the two approaches were the same, but Green Intensity was
class (75.2%). Images of dates without-crack but with de- added in the second approach. The overall classification ac-
Detecting Crack on Dates Using Color Imaging
curacy of stepwise LDA was 84.4%.
iii) Pairwise classification In this approach, two grades
were discriminated at a time and the classification accura-
cies obtained are given in Fig. 9. The highest classification
accuracy (95.7%) was obtained between high-crack and no-
crack dates. The maximum misclassification (41.0%) was
between high-crack and low-crack dates. Since the surface of
the dates was not smooth and uniform, it provided obstacles
while detecting the defects. Al-Ohali (2011) achieved 55 to
80% accuracy while sorting dates based on defects, flabbi-
ness, size, shape and intensity due to limited visibility of the
defects.
Conclusion
In this study, an RGB camera was used to make the
system less expensive and affordable for many commercial
factories. Reasonable classification accuracy of 82% was
obtained in two classes models with the developed system.
However, for more accurate classification, the efficiency of
other types of cameras such as near infrared or ultraviolet in
detection of surface cracks on dates must be studied.
Acknowledgements We thank The Research Council (TRC) of
Sultanate of Oman for funding this study (Project No. RC/AGR/
SWAE/11/01-Development of Computer Vision Technology for
Quality Assessment of Dates in Oman).
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