Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique has recently been applied in agriculture and food science. It has potential to visualize internal structure of foods in nondestructive way and provides spatial information which could make reconstruct of three-dimension. MRI system also has great advantage for tracking water in beans or seeds.
This study intends to analyze the changes of water distribution of coffee beans during water up-taking process. Samples used in the experiment were ‘Robusta’ coffee beans (Vietnam G1, Scr18 polish). A 30mm diameter plastic disposable test tube was used to hold bean during water up-take process. The oil column was placed next to the tube to get and to use as a reference signal. The magnetic resonance imaging system which installed at Institution for Agricultural Machinery & ICT Convergence in Chonbuk National University was used to obtain magnetic resonance (MR) image data sets. 30 images are included in each image data sets with ‘Axial’ image plane direction. In experiment, we used ‘Gradient Echo 3D’ pulse sequence. The water uptake process was performed for 150 minutes and acquired image data sets in every 10 minutes. This study showed some coffee beans which extracted as region of interest (ROI) from each images to study the water uptake process.

• Seung Hoon Baek(Dept. of Bioindustrial Machinery Eng., Chonbuk National University)
• Seong Min Kim(Dept. of Bioindustrial Machinery Eng., Chonbuk National University)
• Myoung Nim Shin(Dept. of Food Science & Technology, Chonbuk National University)
• Yong Seob Jeong(Dept. of Food Science & Technology, Chonbuk National University)