The goal of this project is to develop a low cost, non-destructive system for the detection and mapping of woody from healthy tissue. Woody chicken breast is an emerging issue that affects the meat quality. While it is not harmful to humans, this issue costs the poultry industry millions of dollars in order to prevent and remove the damaged tissue. To better understand the cell composition of muscle tissue of woody and healthy samples, first the electrical properties of these samples need to be studied. Electrical characteristics of biological samples reveal significant information about the tissue compositions such as density and muscle to mass ratio qualitatively and quantitatively. Tissues (fat and mussel) are composed of cells surrounded by extracellular conductive fluid; however, the cell composition is not always uniform. In some areas cells are more occupied and the current must pass though the cell membrane. In others, cells are well separated and the current can flow. Furthermore, cells and biological components have charged particles and ions inside their cores and the surrounding medium. Therefore, the electrical properties of tissue samples would be mostly equal to its counterparts unless there is a difference in structure or density of cells inside the tissue. In order to study the electrical properties of tissue, we exploited impedance analysis technique that measures impedance of the tissue sample of interest at different range of frequencies.

To distinguish woody from healthy samples, impedance measurement was conducted in frequency ranges between 0.01 Hz to 100 KHz in order to calculate tissue resistance at high frequency and capacitance at low frequency. For this study, a set of 5 healthy and woody breast samples was used. The average resistance values of woody and healthy samples were 92 ± 8 and 303 ± 35 Ω respectively; while the average capacitances were measured to be 116 ± 14 nF and 62 ± 5 nF (woody and healthy samples respectively). As a result, impedance based detection was shown an effective method for detection of wooden breast syndrome.