Linearization and Scatter-Correction for Near-Infrared Reflectance Spectra of Meat

TLDR

Diffuse reflectance spectroscopy is used to analyze multicomponent mixtures, but near‑infrared reflectance is nonlinear and distorted by light scatter. The study proposes a multi‑wavelength Multiplicative Scatter Correction (MSC) method to separate chemical absorption from physical scatter in NIR reflectance data. The authors compare several reflectance linearizations (Saunderson, log 1/R, Kubelka‑Munk), apply MSC, and use Partial Least Squares regression to predict meat fat from the corrected spectra. Using MSC, all linearization methods improved fat prediction, with corrected log 1/R and inverse Kubelka‑Munk yielding the best results, and the MSC scatter coefficients correlated with fat content, indicating additive absorption and multiplicative scatter effects.

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the quantitative analysis of multicomponent mixtures by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. Near-infrared reflectance (NIRR) measurements are related to chemical composition but in a nonlinear way, and light scatter distorts the data. Various response linearizations of reflectance (R) are compared ( R with Saunderson correction for internal reflectance, log 1/ R, and Kubelka-Munk transformations and its inverse). A multi-wavelength concept for optical correction (Multiplicative Scatter Correction, MSC) is proposed for separating the chemical light absorption from the physical light scatter. Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression is used as the multivariate linear calibration method for predicting fat in meat from linearized and scatter-corrected NIRR data over a broad concentration range. All the response linearization methods improved fat prediction when used with the MSC; corrected log 1/ R and inverse Kubelka-Munk transformations yielded the best results. The MSC provided simpler calibration models with good correspondence to the expected physical model of meat. The scatter coefficients obtained from the MSC correlated with fat content, indicating that fat affects the NIRR of meat with an additive absorption component and a multiplicative scatter component.