Quantitation of Heating of Foods Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Kevin Nott and Laurie Hall

Herchel Smith Laboratory for Medicinal Chemistry,

University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, University Forvie Site, Robinson Way, Cambridge CB2 2PZ, UK, Tel: +44(0)1223 336805/336807 Fax: +44(0)1223 336748

Email: ldh11@hslmc.cam.ac.uk www.hslmc.cam.ac.uk

ABSTRACT

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is now widely recognised as being one of the most powerful methods for scanning the human body; its strengths are that it provides clinically diagnostic information via non-invasive measurements of the spatial distribution of the water and lipid in human tissues. In marked contrast, the use of MRI to understand foodstuffs is not widely recognised, even by many experts in food processing, notwithstanding the fact that many foods have similar (even identical) composition and structure as human tissues.

This report, which is intended to help to bridge that gap by illustrating developments already pioneered in this Laboratory that demonstrate the practical realities of the use of MRI to quantitate the heating of foods, will start with a statement of fact, namely that:- MRI is the only measurement method available whereby the spatial distribution of temperature of heated foods can be quantitated non-invasively in three dimensions (Nott, 1999); specifically, in 52 seconds the spatial array of temperatures is 32 x 32 x 128 (ca 130,000 voxels) and, dependent on the sample, each temperature can be as accurate as 1°C.

Keywords Magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, temperature, food