Abstract
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•Prediction of pH and % IMF using Raman and infrared spectroscopy was assessed.•Performance of low, mid and high-level data fusion for meat quality assessment was also evaluated.•High-level fusion strategy had the best performance in predicting pH.•Low-level fusion showed good promise in predicting the % IMF.•The reduced NRMSEP highlights the potential of data fusion in predicting the pH and %IMF of meat samples.
The implementation of Raman and infrared spectroscopy with three data fusion strategies to predict pH and % IMF content of red meat was investigated. Raman and FTIR systems were utilized to assess quality parameters of intact red meat. Quantitative models were built using PLS, with model performances assessed with respect to the determination coefficient (R2), root mean square error and normalized root mean square error (NRMSEP). Results obtained on validation against an independent test set show that the high-level fusion strategy had the best performance in predicting the observed pH; with RP2 and NRMSEP values of 0.73 and 12.9% respectively, whereas low-level fusion strategy showed promise in predicting % IMF (NRMSEP = 8.5%). The fusion of data from more than one technique at low and high level resulted in improvement in the model performances; highlighting the possibility of information enhancement.