[FAQ] Frequently Asked Questions

Save Time and discover our FAQs – You will find the Answers to your Food Inspection Questions and Food Control Needs in one Place.

Biometic - A reliable partner

With BIOMETiC, you are on the Safe Side

From food production to processing: At BIOMETiC, we make your products safer, of high quality, and, just as important,cost-effective.

Our mission is to help food companies like yours, who give their best to provide daily safe and high-quality food to people. That’s why we have collected the most frequent questions and answers to some of your food inspection curiosity and needs. Find below the solution to your questions quickly and easily.

And if you can’t find the answer you were looking for, don’t worry. We know that every company, especially in the food industry, has different needs. 

That’s why we offer you the possibility of sending us a free request for a totally free and not binding online demo, where you will quickly get more details about our 3D X-ray inspection solutions, and discover what incredible information our technologies can offer you.

Biometic FAQ

Inspection Solutions for Fruit and Vegetable Cooperatives

We have the answers to your questions about 3D and X-ray food inspection of fruit and vegetables.

Inspection Solutions for the Food Industry

Find the solution to your questions about BIOMETiC’s 3D X-ray inspection systems for processed food products.

BIOMETiC Services and Inspection Solution

Find out more about the services and 3D X-ray solutions we at BIOMETiC offer our customers.

[FAQ] Frequently Asked Questions on BIOMETiC

It depends on the type of BIOMETiC solution application and the product your company processes. But in general, spacing foods products from each other is not necessary.
For example, with the 3D X-ray inspection system Mito, different containers can be scanned simultaneously, even if they are side-by-side and paired.
With Q Eye XP, an X-ray device for the end-of-line inspection of boxed fruits and vegetables and packaged food products, you can simultaneously scan multiple products within a box or package.
Also, with the smart optical sorter Q Eye Smart, you can scan multiple lines of fruits or vegetables side by side at the same time.

The ejection system, as well as the configuration of the chosen BIOMETiC solution, are evaluated and chosen by BIOMETiC together with the customer based on the application, the food product, and the production line layout of the company.
For the ejection systems, you can think, for example, to install mechanical or compressed air ejectors.
Contact us now and find out how easy it can be to integrate a BIOMETiC solution within your production line.

Sure. Data produced by BIOMETiC solutions can also be retrieved and exported at a later date.
Contact us now to get more details on the many benefits a BIOMETiC solution can offer you and your company.

With its accurate system based on multi-sensory approach and 3D reconstruction, Q Eye Smart not only accurately sorts fruits and vegetables based on size, weight, and color, but also on external quality.
Q Eye Smart locates and measures in real-time, for example, the number and position of cuts on the stem cavity of apples.
But it can also determine the “acceptable” percentage of external defects set by the customer.
Q Eye Smart uses these values as ejection criteria for products that do not meet individual quality standards.
Of course, the inspection requirements are adjusted according to the product and company’s needs.

Ensuring food traceability is necessary not only to meet mandatory regulations but more importantly to satisfy your customers. Hence the need for food manufacturers to be able to trace any food through the various stages of production, processing, and distribution.
This need is growing rapidly, given the benefits of improved traceability processes. With its complete traceability system, from the goods delivered to the final product, F-Trace guarantees full traceability of your products, even those in stock.
It can be integrated on existing plants using the data collected with the machines already present in your line to guarantee you total control and greater visibility of production processes, speed in identifying and recalling exactly the contaminated products of a given lot, and reduction of recall management costs.
Of course, traceability requirements are tailored to your company’s needs.
With its X-ray vision, Q Eye XP locates and measures in real-time, for example, the distribution of rot within the fruit in boxes.
But it can also determine the customer’s established “acceptable” percentage of pulp and holes.
Q Eye XP uses these values as ejection criteria for crates that do not meet individual quality standards. Of course, the inspection requirements are adjusted based on product and business needs.
The radiation dose is indicated in the Gray or Sievert unit of measurement. WHO has set defined limits for irradiated foods in Codex Alimentarius 1.
As an example, the maximum radiation dose absorbed by food must not exceed 10 kGy.
For example, products passing through Mito, the 3D in-line X-ray inspection device, absorb a maximum of 200 mGy per second when exposed to radiation for 1 second. Mito’s radiation dose is, therefore, 50,000 times lower than the allowable limit.

[FAQ] Frequently Asked Questions on BIOMETiC

With a conventional 2D X-ray inspection device, images are captured “only” from a fixed position. Therefore, it is not possible to see the internal structures and components of the product and understand their position. This means that if, for example, a foreign body is in a position at an unfavorable angle to the X-ray source, you can’t see it.

Mito, Biometic’s in-line 3D X-ray inspection device, uses a rotating X-ray source. With a processing speed on the production line of 40m/min, in 1 second, the X-ray source makes 2 rotations around each individual object and captures about 400 internal images. These are processed in real-time and transformed into 3D reconstructions to complete evaluation of the examined product.
With Mito in your company’s production line, you can scan multiple products simultaneously, paired or side-by-side on the conveyor belt, at a maximum speed of 40 m/min. However, Biometic’s solutions are constantly expanding, both in terms of development and functionality. Contact us now to find out if we have the application for you ready.
It depends on the type of Biometic solution application and the product your company processes. But in general, spacing foods products from each other is not necessary.
For example, with the 3D X-ray inspection system Mito, different containers can be scanned simultaneously, even if they are side-by-side and paired.
With Q Eye XP, an X-ray device for the end-of-line inspection of boxed fruits and vegetables and packaged food products, you can simultaneously scan multiple products within a box or package. Also, with the smart optical sorter Q Eye, you can scan multiple lines of fruits or vegetables side by side at the same time.
Mito takes advantage of all three dimensions (length, width, and depth) to capture up to 400 high-resolution 0.5 mm internal images for each object scanned.
Images are taken along all three axes (0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 mm) for a resolution of 1 voxel.
In general, in identifying foreign matter within food, not everything is possible or is always possible.
In fact, the detection of foreign matter in food products by Mito depends on the density difference between the foreign body and the matrix.
Contact us now to find out if we already have the application for you ready
At Biometic, we are known and appreciated by our customers for the precision and thoroughness with which our technicians perform testing on various applications.
We want to make sure we offer only the best to our customers. For the many applications tested with Mito, the false rejection rate of products with hard-to-detect foreign bodies was under 1% for the most difficult cases and under 0.1% for the most standard cases.
We also had an excellent result for the false rejection rate based on food weight measurement, considering that it is an indirect measurement: under 1%.
Depending on the application and the quality features that the customer’s product has, we set Mito’s algorithms to rule out false positives and false negatives.
For example, if a food producer of toast bread produces a bread with air bubbles, and within certain size limits, he/she doesn’t consider them a defect, Mito will reject only those products with air bubbles larger than the established limits from the production line.
If, for example, a producer of jars of sauces or preserves doesn’t want to have false positives caused by air bubbles, Mito can easily detect and discard the containers containing them to exclude false positives.
The ejection system, as well as the configuration of the chosen Biometic solution, are evaluated and chosen by Biometic together with the customer based on the application, the food product, and the production line layout of the company.
For the ejection systems, you can think, for example, to install mechanical or compressed air ejectors. Contact us now and find out how easy it can be to integrate a Biometic solution within your production line.
The standard conveyor belt width of the Mito is available in a 250 mm or 500 mm variant. The scanning section is circular, but the configuration depends on where the belt is placed to take advantage of all three dimensions depending on the product.
There is no need to line up products to be scanned or position them in a particular direction to be scanned correctly by Mito. That’s because Biometic’s 3D X-ray inspection system takes advantage of all three dimensions (length, width, and depth) to scan products from all sides, so you get a three-dimensional (3D) inspection and image of the product.
Sure. Data produced by Biometic solutions can also be retrieved and exported at a later date.
Contact us now to get more details on the many benefits a Biometic solution can offer you and your company.
Because there is currently no other in-line 3D X-ray scanner technology in the food industry that can detect foreign objects, and, more importantly, that enables active, real-time intervention in production processes.
Mito’s multidimensional approach not only enables classic foreign object detection, but also extends its scope to manufacturing processes where it actively intervenes to improve results.
Thanks to high-resolution scanning images of 0.5 mm, Mito not only localizes the smallest foreign bodies inside foods but also determines the quality characteristics of the product itself (such as the amount of filling) and the mandatory presence of key ingredients (such as a whole hazelnut or the proportion of air).
The scanned product thus remains unaltered because Mito acquires the data through a non-destructive analysis.
With its X-ray vision, Mito locates and measures in real-time, for example, the number and distribution of air bubbles inside the bread. But it can also determine the customer’s established “acceptable” percentage of dough and air bubbles. Mito uses these values as expulsion criteria for products that do not meet individual quality standards.
Of course, the inspection requirements are adapted according to the product and the company’s needs.
Ensuring food traceability is necessary not only to meet mandatory regulations but more importantly to satisfy your customers. Hence the need for food manufacturers to be able to trace any food through the various stages of production, processing, and distribution.
This need is growing rapidly, given the benefits of improved traceability processes. With its complete traceability system, from the goods delivered to the final product, F-Trace guarantees full traceability of your products, even those in stock.
It can be integrated on existing plants using the data collected with the machines already present in your line to guarantee you total control and greater visibility of production processes, speed in identifying and recalling exactly the contaminated products of a given lot, and reduction of recall management costs. Of course, traceability requirements are tailored to your company’s needs.
With a traditional 2D X-ray inspection device, only images are acquired from a fixed position. That means that it does not see the product’s internal structures and components and understand their position.
Therefore, for example, you cannot detect a foreign body in a position at an unfavorable angle to the X-ray source. To create a 3D radiographic image, however, Mito’s radiographic source rotates 360° around the food to be analyzed, thus making a cylindrical spiral movement, more or less like the computerized tomographs used in the medical field.
Together with the application of mathematical algorithms, the helical movement reconstructs a complete 3D image of the scanned product.
As a company’s productivity increases, human error is more likely to occur.
With Mito’s technical support, your employees can feel more comfortable in the workplace and make appropriate decisions about defective goods.
If Mito finds a contaminated and/or defective product in a food company’s production line, production operators must act immediately.
With Mito, manufacturers know the cause of the contamination and quality defect and can immediately remove only the contaminated or defective products before they reach consumers.
Mito controls and inspects every single product. With documentation created during the manufacturing process, the manufacturing company using Mito’s in-line 3D X-ray inspection has the evidence in hand and can defend itself in the event of fraud.
Year after year, corporations are investing more and more in security. Very few systems provide manufacturers with real-time information of the right composition to comply with to optimize value for money. Mito is one of them.
Nothing determines the end result as much as the raw material used. With Biometic’s in-line 3D X-ray inspection device, you can check the quality characteristics of the raw material before it goes to processing and determine which parts you can get the most out of.
Manufacturers work closely with their main customers, the retail trade. The latter increasingly invest in safety measures to protect consumer health. With Mito, an in-line 3D X-ray inspection device, the retail trade can, on the one hand, resell the product at a higher price and, on the other hand, guarantee customers a high degree of product safety.
In a nutshell, both the manufacturer and the consumer benefit from using our inspection system.
Given current demand, delivery times start at 3 months and up. Specifically, this always depends on the hardware and software applications needed.
Depending on your company’s needs, we will further adapt the software application to best manage your production process.
Yes, some of our in-line 3D X-ray inspection systems have already been installed, such as at the dairy cooperative Latteria Vipiteno. But such a system is not suitable for all types of companies in the food industry. There are a number of criteria that must be met in order to achieve meaningful results.
For this reason, we provide you with our corporate know-how and consulting services to help you choose the best Biometic solution for your needs and your company. We will support you step by step along this path:
We thought of offering you an online demonstration, during which we can find out together if you and your company can also benefit from the installation of Mito in your production.
Should Mito be suitable for your product range, we will ask you to send us samples, which we will use for initial testing.
In a subsequent appointment at our company, you will be able to see first-hand the added value you can achieve by installing our solution in your production line. Together we can also visit one of the companies where Mito is already in use.

We offer you all these services completely free of charge because we are convinced that we are the right partner for you. Contact us now to learn more!
Mito can, e.g., provide alerts to your line’s ingredient dispensers, overdoses can be reduced in real-time.
Most processed foods contain various ingredients that often, to meet standards set by the manufacturer and the law, are added in larger quantities, such as the number of cookies in a package or the amount of fruit preparation in a yogurt.
However, with Mito, you’ll be able to measure the exact quantities in volume and weight of these ingredients. Thus you’ll avoid waste and save on resources.
If you do not use a 3D X-ray inspection device, the damage that results from marketing defective products can cost you dearly, both in terms of money and reputation.
The radiation dose is indicated in the Gray or Sievert unit of measurement. WHO has set defined limits for irradiated foods in Codex Alimentarius 1. As an example, the maximum radiation dose absorbed by food must not exceed 10 kGy.
For example, products passing through Mito, the 3D in-line X-ray inspection device, absorb a maximum of 200 mGy per second when exposed to radiation for 1 second. Mito’s radiation dose is, therefore, 50,000 times lower than the allowable limit.
Thanks to the very low radiation dose of 0.5 microsieverts per hour (μSv/h), and meeting Biometic’s installation criteria, all types of food can be inspected.
If a food manufacturer produces special foods for specific purposes or needs to have scanning algorithms specifically developed for their products, they can be requested in individual cases.
Contact us now, and let’s evaluate together the possibilities for inspection of your products.

[FAQ] Frequently Asked Questions on BIOMETiC

Depending on the speed of the conveyor system, the average exposure time is about 1 second.

It depends on how and which products your company classifies as “defective”.
The detection rate depends mainly on the characteristics of the product to be analyzed.
Other determining factors are density, size, weight, packaging material, raw materials, etc.
There are two different methods of food irradiation. If foods are sterilized with any type of radiation, there is a labeling requirement. If the products are instead analyzed internally and externally with the X-rays of a Biometic solution, then there is no labeling requirement.
From the checks carried out, and always in correlation with the irradiation time, with the power of the X-rays with which Biometic’s systems operate, the food is free of radiation.
Of course. The care of our customers does not end with the commissioning of the inspection device.

We offer professional 24/7 technical support for every type of system in the appropriate language because we want to play it safe like you. In the event of technical problems, you can contact us immediately and at any time. If enabled by you, we will intervene directly on your system with remote maintenance.
Depending on the application, our After Sales Team offers a support contract that can be flexibly adapted throughout the system’s operational life. This way, we can guarantee you an investment that is always perfectly aligned with your company’s needs.
Our strength, in addition to guaranteeing unparalleled food safety and quality, is to ensure from the first approach a complete maintenance program and technical support, wherever you are. To ensure the most efficient operation of your Biometic solution, our After Sales team will support you with a range of services to ensure the smooth and proper operation of your Biometic solution – from training your operators, preventative maintenance site visits to software, and hardware upgrades of your Biometic solution.

We understand that every company, particularly in the food industry, is unique and has different needs. What sets us at Biometic apart is the importance we place on customization and continuous improvement of each of our solutions.

And that’s why Biometic solutions grow with your business.

Whether it’s foreign bodies or quality defects, we ensure your Biometic food inspection system always meets your needs as a producer or manufacturer, even after the sale.

Thanks in part to the use of artificial intelligence, our innovative inspection systems guarantee the best solutions for all major food and fruit and vegetable companies. In addition, our After Sales team is at your side with a range of services even after the sale:

  • Spare parts packages
  •  Software upgrades
  •  Hardware upgrades
  •  Preventive maintenance visits on-site and remotely carried out by specialized technical staff
  •  On-site optimization visits with the intervention of our engineers
  •  Remote and on-site training sessions for your operators
With the purchase of a Biometic solution, the training of your production staff on the operation of the inspection system by our experts is also included. If you require training for other operators at a later date, you can always add an extra training package for your chosen solution.
Foreign bodies and quality defects can be detected in hard-to-verify places, such as inside a glass jar, an apple’s stem cavity, or a fruit and vegetable box. The benefit to those responsible for final inspection on the production line is obvious.
Thanks to the intuitive safety system of Biometic inspection solutions, production line operators receive an immediate warning about “damaged” or “non-conforming” products. Through safety mechanisms built into the point where products are ejected, there is no need for personnel to intervene directly. Production managers can still modify the decisions made by the system.
Each product is inspected individually. When the traceability system of the installed Biometic inspection solution detects a defective product, thanks to individual product inspection, it understands if it is an entire batch that is defective or if it is just one product. It is then up to production managers to make the appropriate decisions.
In addition to the financial damage that can result from failing to detect a defective product, it is primarily the damage to reputation and image that can have unforeseen implications. Contact us now to get more details on the many benefits a Biometic solution can offer you and your company.
The radiation dose of X-ray systems is measured in Sieverts. An X-ray image taken by a dentist, for example, shows a radiation dose of 10 microsieverts (μSv). Mito emits a radiation dose of 0.5 μSv per hour (μSv/h). A person could stand next to the device for as long as 10 hours straight without having health damage.
For us at Biometic, it is particularly important to ensure comfortable and intuitive systems for our customers. For example, we have programmed an auto-calibration procedure that allows you to recalibrate the system in a few seconds – even if the system has to be restarted due to a sudden power failure. Our systems don’t waste your valuable time, and they can resume production very quickly.
With Biometic’s inspection solutions, you can, for example, analyze the amount of filling in a container based on measured density or the exact number of products in a package or fruit and vegetable box. Our solutions thus avoid wastage of ingredients and products while ensuring that the minimum weight set by law is achieved.
Investments in most of our solutions meet all the requirements to access the “Industry 4.0” tax credit benefits. Contact us now to find out how to apply and the benefits you’ll reap in the long run.
For example, when sorting chestnuts, X-ray vision can provide valuable information about the internal quality, and therefore the true value, of an individual chestnut. The problem is that many chestnuts are already rotten on the inside or have air inclusions that, with the current method of selection, the chestnuts are only dipped in water and provide almost no information about the true condition of the chestnut.
Many people associate X-rays with an “invisible danger”. This mainly depends on the use for which they were initially designed and the type of energy used. In fact, radiation can be used for food sterilization or rapid product analysis in the food industry. On the other hand, Mito uses X-rays to analyze products in a very short time with a radiation dose of 0.5 microsieverts per hour (μSv/h), a dose ten times lower than an intercontinental trip (approx. 5 μSv/h). The purpose of the analysis is only to verify the weight, measure the filling level, determine the cost of the ingredients used and detect foreign bodies. You’re on the safe side with Mito, in every sense of the expression.
If you had to choose between two identical foods, say between two yogurts in glass jars, one of which has been inspected with an in-line 3D X-ray device for foreign bodies, such as glass fragments, and other food safety-relevant criteria during production and the other has not… which one would you choose?
The European Scientific Committee on Food (SCF) has determined that consumption of irradiated foods is not detrimental to health. However, the Committee stressed that food irradiation should not be used to conceal hygiene negligence in the handling of food or its unsuitability for consumption.

Do not hesitate to contact us

We are at your complete disposal. We would be happy to provide you with our know-how and free consulting services to select the best BIOMETiC solution for your food inspection and fruit sorting needs.

Contact us now, and let’s discuss how we can make your food products and fresh produce better and more secure than ever before.