Nutritional metabolism evaluation and image segmentation of the chicken muscle and internal organs for automatic evisceration.

ABSTRACT

The chicken is rich in various proteins, fatty acids, polysaccharides, trace elements, and other human essential nutrients that contribute to its high nutritional value. In this study, the expression levels of nutrition-related genes (acetyl-CoA acyltransferase, ACAA) of native chicken breeds were investigated. The level of GgalACAA1-2 transcripts expression in the liver of chicken was significantly higher than that of muscle and heart. Moreover, three protein extracts were isolated from the muscle, heart, and liver tissues from the chicken, and their nutritional function was evaluated in the present study. These protein extracts had excellent DPPH and hydroxyl radical scavenging capacities and exhibited significant superoxide anion scavenging ability. Moreover, the protein extracts of muscle tissue showed an important mouse splenocyte proliferation activity and could be used as an immunomodulator of natural origin. In addition, this report presented an automatic visual inspection of chicken viscera using the active contour algorithms and the image processing method for eviscerating by the parallel robot. The recognition and positioning rate of chicken viscera obtained by the proposed method could reach 96.45%. These methods provided basic data for automated poultry slaughter and segmentation, avoiding unnecessary health risks by a pathogenic microorganism, such as avian influenza, Newcastle disease virus, and coronavirus. Moreover, the internal organs of the chicken could be fully harvested by the image segmentation of automatic evisceration, which also facilitated the processing value of these internal organs as by-products of poultry.