The egg is world famous for its role in the evolution of life, religious traditions, culture and breakfast. With the latter, the chicken egg is the primary choice for which the production depends on careful inspection of each egg to ensure high quality. To make the inspection efficient, non-destructive inspection (NDI) techniques, which are of high speed, and that can potentially be implemented in the line of production, are in demand.
In this work, we present the first mid-infrared (MIR) optical coherence tomography (OCT) study of eggs. We apply both near-infrared- (NIR) and MIR OCT systems, of respective centre wavelengths of 1.3 µm and 4 µm. We inspect a quail egg and two chicken eggs, brown and white. The quail and chicken eggs present two different kinds of shells, both seen in structure and thickness.
Funding: Horizon Europe, Grant Agreement No. 101058054 (TURBO) and No. 101057404 (ZDZW). VILLUM Fonden (2021 Villum Investigator project no. 00037822: Table-Top Synchrotrons).
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