Japanese scientists are working on a way to check the quality of sushi, the country’s most popular dish, using the same technique used to examine fetuses in mothers’ wombs, according to the British newspaper “The Times”.
Researchers at Tokai University in Tokyo announced that they have discovered a way to use ultrasound scanners to check the freshness of frozen tuna, which is the most common ingredient in sushi and sashimi dishes.
After this technology is put on the market, any ordinary person with a scanner will be able to verify the quality of tuna, which was the preserve of a few experts who rely on their senses and experience in this field.
Although the Japanese today consume less fish than previous generations, they remain the world’s largest consumer of tuna, consuming a quarter of global output, most of which is raw.
Huge ships catch large quantities of fish in the oceans far from Japan, and therefore they must be stored and frozen to preserve them, which makes it difficult to judge the quality of these fish after thawing them because many of them lose their freshness and taste after a long period of storage.
At the inaugural New Year’s auction at the Toytsu Fish Market in Tokyo, a tuna weighing 212 kilograms of the highest quality was sold for 36 million yen ($275,000).
Until now, the task of grading was done by cutting off the tail of the tuna and examining the exposed meat and layers of fat.
According to Fujitsu’s AI lab, “Tuna tail cutting often leads to damage and ultimately devalues the fish, and the process relies heavily on a limited number of trained experts to conduct thorough quality checks.”
Accordingly, scientists are experimenting with scanning frozen tuna using ultrasound, and analyzing the results using artificial intelligence.
“By analyzing waveforms using machine learning, we have developed the world’s first method for determining the freshness of frozen tuna without the need to cut the product,” the team of scientists explained.
He continued, “The new technology offers a new way to check the quality of frozen tuna without devaluing it, and may one day contribute to increasing confidence and safety in the global distribution of frozen tuna and other food products.”
Ultimately, the scientists aim to develop manual tuna scanners that can be used to identify bad fish with more than 70 percent accuracy, as well as detect other devaluing defects such as blood clots and tumors.
This technology can be sold outside Japan, where tuna consumption is in high demand. Market research firm Global Information estimates that global tuna sales will grow from $40.7 billion in 2021 to $48.8 billion in 2027.