Applicability of computer tomography in the prediction of egg yolk ratio in hen’s eggs

Abstract

Applicability of computer tomography (CT) was examined for the in vivo determination of egg yolk ratio in commercial hen’s eggs. Altogether 60 eggs were measured by CT, and two different evaluation methods were tested for the prediction of the egg yolk ratio. Because of the overlapping of the X-ray density values of the yolk and albumen, the evaluation based on the X-ray absorption seems not to be useful for the in vivo prediction of the egg yolk ratio. The determination of the surface of the egg yolk on the cross-sectional images resulted in a 69.3-74.1% accuracy of prediction, depending on the number of scans involved in the evaluation.

Key words:

• Hen
• Egg
• Computer tomography
• Prediction