Feasibility of Using Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy for Assessing Biological Cell Damage during Freezing and Thawing

Abstract

This study was performed to test bioimpedance as a tool to detect the effect of different thawing methods on meat quality to aid in the eventual creation of an electric impedance-based food quality monitoring system. The electric impedance was measured for fresh pork, thawed pork, and during quick and slow thawing. A clear difference was observed between fresh and thawed samples for both impedance parameters. Impedance was different between the fresh and the frozen-thawed samples, but there were no impedance differences between frozen-thawed samples and the ones that were frozen-thawed and then stored at +3 °C for an additional 16 h after thawing. The phase angle was also different between fresh and the frozen-thawed samples. At high frequency, there were small, but clear phase angle differences between frozen-thawed samples and the samples that were frozen-thawed and subsequently stored for more than 16 h at +3 °C. Furthermore, the deep learning model LSTM-RNN (long short-term memory recurrent neural network) was found to be a promising way to classify the different methods of thawing.