International Dairy Journal 31 (2013) 150e155

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International Dairy Journal

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Quantitative comparison of the eye formation in cheese using

radiography and computed tomography data
P. Schuetz a, *, D. Guggisberg b, I. Jerjen a, M.T. Fröhlich-Wyder b, J. Hofmann a, D. Wechsler b,
A. Flisch a, W. Bisig b, U. Sennhauser a, H.-P. Bachmann b
a
EMPA, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland
b
Agroscope Liebefeld-Posieux Research Station, ALP-Haras, Switzerland

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Eye formation is an important quality parameter in the dairy industry for (semi-)hard cheeses in
Received 6 September 2012 Switzerland. To monitor the formation of eyes in cheese, radiography and, more recently, computed
Received in revised form tomography (CT) technology, are employed. In the present study, two quality indicators (eye number and
18 December 2012
total eye volume) are calculated from radiographs by two recent procedures and compared with the
Accepted 19 December 2012
results from CT data. The radiograph analysis procedures underestimate both quantifiers systematically
and the deviation increases with the number of eyes. In contrast to radiographic data, the distribution of
the eye volumes and positions as well as their geometric shape can be calculated from the CT data. These
data allowed the observation that the eyes in the considered cheeses accumulate in the centre of the
cheese, are predominately of spherical shape and non-spherical eyes can be extracted by a simple
geometrical criterion. These findings illustrate the advantages of the CT technology.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Non-destructive monitoring of eye (gas holes) formation in
cheese is often used during and/or after ripening. Size, shape,
number, and distribution of eyes in cheese are important parame-
ters for the assessment of eye formation in many cheese varieties.
The presence of cracks and irregular eyes leads to downgrading of
the cheese quality and, as a consequence, causes economic losses. In
the quality assessment of traditional Emmentaler PDO cheese,
eye formation is assessed by listening to the sound while tapping
on the surface of the cheese and by evaluating small cylinders
of cheese that are sampled with a cheese trier. Nowadays, more
advanced methods of image acquisition, using ultrasound (Albrecht,
Ulmann, & Bosset, 1998; Conde, Mulet, Clemente, & Benedito, 2008;
Eskelinen, Alavuotunki, Haeggström, & Alatossava, 2007), magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI; Rosenberg, McCarthy, & Kauten, 1992),
radiography (Kraggerud, Wold, Hoy, & Abrahamsen, 2009), and
computed tomography (CT; Lee et al., 2012) are applied. To examine
the geometry of cheese eyes destructive approaches relying on
confocal microscopy (Ding & Gunasekaran,1998; Fenoul, Le Denmat,
Hamdi, Cuvelier, & Michon, 2008) and optical imaging (Caccamo
et al., 2004) are applied.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ41 58 765 43 36.
E-mail address: schutz.p@gmail.com (P. Schuetz).
Radiography and CT are not only widely used in medicine, but
also attracted strong interest in food science. For instance, the
quality of fruits (Mendoza et al., 2007) and the porosity in the bread
crump (Lassoued, Babin, Della Valle, Devaux, & Réguerre, 2007)
have been investigated. Recently, CT has also been employed to
compare the eye formation at different stages of the cheese rip-
ening (Lee et al., 2012) and to quantify the total cheese eye volume
without destruction of the cheeses (Guggisberg et al., 2013). In
comparison with conventional radiographic data, the volumetric CT
data allows an accurate extraction of depth and distance informa-
tion along the line of projection. Furthermore, on the 3D models of
bread (Lassoued et al., 2007), fruits (Mendoza et al., 2007) and other
porous goods (Du & Sun, 2004; Falcone et al., 2006; Ho et al., 2013),
various quantifiers have been applied to judge the quality of the
examined product. However, CT scanning is more expensive than
radiography, although the price difference is decreasing, due to
technological improvements. Nevertheless, an advantage of the CT
method is that the analysis can be automated and the amount of
information accessible by CT exceeds the potential of radiography.
The objective of the present study was to compare key quanti-
fiers for the eyes in a cheese (number of eyes and total volume) as
extracted from radiographs and tomographic measurements,
employing different image processing tools. To highlight the com-
plementary information accessible by CT, the study aimed to
examine the distribution of eyes in cheese and their geometrical
shape. A further objective of the study was to develop a procedure

0958-6946/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.idairyj.2012.12.007
 P. Schuetz et al. / International Dairy Journal 31 (2013) 150e155
for an automatic recognition of opening defects such as cracks and
coalesced eyes.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Production of cheese
Three hard cheeses (standard formulation for Emmental) were
produced at the ALP pilot plant from 90 L microfiltrated, raw,
skimmed milk and UHT treated cream, by adding a starter culture
consisting of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. lactis and Streptococcus
thermophilus. The culture responsible for eye formation was Pro-
pionibacterium freudenreichii. The three cheeses were round, 30 cm
in diameter, and around 6.5 kg each. The ripening time was five
months. The three cheeses investigated in this study were selected
at random out of a production series of 16 cheeses due to their
distinct differences in eye formation (weak, medium, strong). The
selected cheeses were labelled with lead numerals on the radio-
graphs (Fig. 1) as cheese 9, 10, and 12, which are referred to as
“sample 1”, “sample 2” and “sample 3”.
2.2. Chemical analyses
Laboratory analysis of each cheese was performed at the end of
the ripening time of five months. The fat content of the cheeses was
determined by the Gerberevan Gulik method (ISO, 2008). Water
was determined by the dry matter method (IDF, 1982). Total lactic
acid and citrate were analysed enzymatically, according to the in-
struction protocol of the kit manufacturer (R-Biopharm, Darmstadt,
Germany). Short chain fatty acids (C1eC4) were analysed by GCe
FID with headspace technology after esterification with ethanol,
adapted from Thierry, Maillard, and Le Quéré (1999). Apart from the
distinct differences in eye formation (Fig. 1), no essential differ-
ences were observed in the chemical composition of the three
investigated cheeses (data not shown).
2.3. Radiographic measurement
The radiographs were taken with a mobile Practix 21 system
(Philips, Zürich, Switzerland), at 65 kV acceleration voltage and
Fig. 1. Eyes extracted from the radiographs of three cheeses with weak (sample 1), medium (sample 2) and strong (sample 3) eye formation by means of (a) the Kraggerud et al.
(2009) algorithm and (b) the circular Hough transform (Peng, 2010).
151
20 mA tube current. The exposure time for each cheese was set
to 0.8 s.
2.4. Computed tomography measurement
CT images of all three cheeses were acquired using a CT scanner
(Philips CT Brilliance 16P, Zürich, Switzerland) with the following
conditions: 120 kV, 150 mA, and 0.5 mm slice spacing. The pixel size
in the individual tomographic slices was set to 0.424 mm for
sample 1 and to 0.431 mm for samples 2 and 3. The cheeses were
directly transported from the cold room (5  C) to the CT scanner,
still packed in a plastic bag, but not vacuumed. The CT scan time for
each cheese was about 10 s. After scanning, the cheeses were
returned to the cold room (5  C).
2.5. Image analysis of radiographs
The inherent anisotropic illumination in the radiographs was
corrected by applying the “rolling ball” algorithm (Sternberg, 1983)
in the freeware software Fiji (currently available online under
http://fiji.sc). A radius of 200 pixels was chosen for sample 1, and
a radius of 50 pixels was chosen for samples 2 and 3. To reduce the
running time of the extraction algorithms, the radiographs were
scaled down by a factor of four in each direction. Subsequently, the
eyes in the cheese were extracted based on two different pro-
cedures: A procedure based on cross-correlation of the binarised
image and a template for the cheese eye, previously introduced by
Kraggerud et al. (2009) (KR), and alternatively, with an algorithm
based on a Hough transform (HT) assuming circular objects (Peng,
2010). The central hypothesis for both procedures was that the eyes
are almost spherical, i.e., in a radiographic projection, the eyes
appear as potentially overlapping disks.
In the KR procedure, the image was binarised using the shifted
median as a criterion. The threshold values for the KR algorithm
were fine-tuned based on an optical inspection, and a shift value of
40 grey levels for samples 1 and 2, and a shift value of 70 grey levels
for sample 3 was chosen. Subsequently, the normalised cross-
correlation of the image with disk-shaped masks was calculated
pixel by pixel for disks of 2e30 pixels in radius. The centres of the
cheese eyes were determined as the centroids of the individual
152 P. Schuetz et al. / International Dairy Journal 31 (2013) 150e155
components in the binarised maximum cross-correlation image.
The radius of the eye was equal to the radius of the disk with the
same centre as the centroid of the considered component, yielding
the highest cross-correlation value with the image. The volume V of
the cheese eye was calculated by the formula
V ¼ 4p=3r 3 ;
justified by the assumption of a spherical eye.
The implementation of the HT algorithm by Peng (2010) operates
on greyscale images, and therefore, does not require a binarisation of
the image. In the first step, the boundaries were extracted by a se-
lection criterion on the magnitude of the gradient. Subsequently, the
circle positions were determined as the centroids of the peaks in the
accumulation matrix (details given in Peng, 2010). The radii of the
eyes were determined as the radius of the circle yielding the highest
match with the local vicinity of the putative circle centre. The
maximum radius considered for the HT-based procedure was cho-
sen based on a visual inspection of the results as 60 pixels for sample
1, 20 pixels for sample 2, and 10 pixels for sample 3.
Both algorithms were implemented in Matlab, Version 7.10.0
R2010a (MathWorks Inc., Natick, MA, USA). The major advantage of
the HT-based procedure is that it is able to discriminate completely
surrounded circles, which can happen if two eyes are stacked on
top of each other.
To estimate the size of the eyes in metric units, the pixel size was
determined by the size of the plastic support of the lead numerals
mounted on the cheeses. For sample 1, we determined a pixel size
of 0.10 mm, and for samples 2 and 3, we determined a pixel size of
0.11 mm in the original radiographs.
2.6. Image analysis of computed tomograph data
To facilitate the analysis, the tomographic slices were trans-
formed from DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communication in
Medicine) format to tiff format, employing the Dicom2Tiff version
0.9.9. software (Disect Systems, Ipswich, England). With the free-
ware program Fiji, the visible parts of the CT gantry were deleted
from each slice, as much as possible. For the detection of the eyes in
the cheese and the assessment of their geometrical properties, the
industry standard software Volume Graphics (VG) Studio Max
versions 2.1 and 2.2 pre-release (Volume Graphics, Heidelberg,
Germany) was employed. The small differences in the pixel size
were eliminated in the analysis by working only with physical di-
mensions (mm and mm3). To reduce the noise level in the images,
a median filter with rank 3 was applied on the CT volume data
(replacement of the grey value of a pixel by the median of the grey
values of the adjacent pixels in all three dimensions). The cheese
matter was defined by a threshold on the grey value. The following
thresholds on the grey values were applied for the investigated
cheeses: 10,870 for sample 1, 9390 for sample 2, and 9421 for
Table 1
Comparative determination of the eye formation in experimental Emmental cheeses with weak (sample 1), medium (sample 2) and strong (sample 3) eye formation by means
of two different image analysis of radiographs (KR, HT) and computed tomography (CT) data.a
Cheese Number of eyes Total eye volume (cm3)
KR HT CT KR HT CT
Sample 1 10 10 12 22.7 35.9 70.4
Sample 2 55 60 76 39.2 47.0 155.2
Sample 3 125 157 331 21.3 51.0 226.9
a
The three parameters ‘number of eyes’, ‘total eye volume’, and ‘average diameter of cheese eyes’ were extracted from radiographs by using an algorithm previously applied
by Kraggerud et al. (KR) and a Hough transform (HT) algorithm. As the three-dimensional CT measurement allowed a more accurate estimation of the three investigated
parameters, these results should be considered as reference values compared with results obtained by the image analysis software tools (KR, HT).
sample 3. The eyes were extracted with the defect analysis module
employing the default settings. The variation of the threshold grey
value had only a minor effect on the number of eyes extracted (data
not shown). VG Studio Max defines the cavities not only by
a simple threshold criterion, but also considers fractions of a voxel,
depending on the neighbouring grey values, allowing a more ac-
(1) curate volume determination. However, the determination of the
eye volume depended only weakly on the threshold grey value. The
defect analysis with VG Studio Max required on average 20 s for the
considered datasets and thresholds. For further analysis, the eye
volume values, the coordinates of the eye centres, and the exten-
sions of each eye along the coordinate axes were calculated by VG
Studio Max and exported to a text file. The exported data were
statistically analysed using gawk (Free Software Foundation, Bos-
ton, MA, USA) and plotted with gnuplot.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Extraction of eyes from radiographs with two different image
analysis procedures
The radiographs obtained from the three investigated cheeses
are shown in Fig. 1. The eyes recognised by the KR algorithm
(pattern matching technique based on the cross-correlation of the
binarised image with disks as a model for a cheese eye) and the HT
procedure (Hough transform on the greyscale image searching for
circular objects) are highlighted in Fig. 1a and b, respectively.
In agreement with a previous study (Kraggerud et al., 2009), both
algorithms detected reliably the eyes in the cheese, as long as they
were of a similar size and did not overlap (Fig. 1a and b, left image).
Small eyes (compared with the extension of the cheese) or cracks
orthogonal to the projection line displayed a bad contrast. Therefore,
both procedures did not detect these structures. An example was the
small pore at the level of the lead numerals and the large crack
(visualised best in the 3D rendering as an inset in Fig. 5 left).
A second major challenge for the algorithms was the detection
of overlapping or even stacked eyes (eyes are positioned on the
same line of X-ray-projection, but at different heights in the
cheese), as can be seen in samples 2 and 3. For these radiographs,
both procedures underestimate the number of eyes substantially
and more pronouncedly with increasing overlap. The KR algorithm
did not recognise the stacked eyes (due to binarisation of the im-
age), split weakly overlapping eyes into too many fragments and
merged strongly overlapping holes into one big element. On the
other hand, the HT procedure did not recognise eyes/pores smaller
than the average due to a bad boundary contrast in the radiograph.
3.2. Analysis of computed tomography data
CT images reliably represent the three-dimensional distribution
of matter in a sample. Therefore, pores of variable size, shape and
Average diameter of Ratio to results from CT data
cheese eyes (mm)
Number of eyes (%) Total eye volume (%)
KR HT CT KR HT KR HT
16.3 19.0 22.4 83.3 83.3 32.3 51.0
11.1 11.4 15.7 72.4 78.9 25.3 30.3
6.9 8.5 10.9 37.8 47.4 9.4 22.5
 P. Schuetz et al. / International Dairy Journal 31 (2013) 150e155 153

orientation can be extracted directly from CT data without any

a priori information. Assuming no eyes to be smaller than the
resolution of the CT scanner, the analysis of computed tomography
data yielded reliable results for the number of eyes, the total eye
volume (Table 1), the distribution of the eye centres along arbitrary
axes of projection (two examples are shown in Fig. 2) and the
volume of the individual eyes (histogram displayed in Fig. 3).
Noteworthy, the value of the grey level threshold for the recog-
nition of the cheese matter had only a limited influence on the
results. The total eye volume varied less than five per cent when the
threshold grey value was changed substantially by a value of 1000
(data not shown).

3.3. Comparison of the results from the radiographic and

tomographic image analyses

The number of eyes and the total eye volume obtained from the
analysis of the computed tomography data served as reference
values for the comparison with the results obtained from the
radiographic image analyses (Table 1). Samples 1 and 2, which
contained only 12 and 76 eyes, respectively, had a distinctly smaller
Fig. 3. Distribution of eye sizes for sample 2 (solid line) and sample 3 (dashed line).
Both cheeses display a strong population around 0.5 cm3. However, sample 2 displays
further populations with significantly higher volumes.

degree of overlapping eyes. In these two cheeses, a rather reliable

estimation of the eye number was achieved with both radiograph-
about half of the effective eye volume. The radiipwere ffiffiffi under-
based procedures (KR and HT). However, due to the complex
estimated, on average, by a factor of approximately 3 2z1:26.
arrangement of the eyes in sample 3, with 331 eyes, both pro-
A major reason for this deviation is the divergent beam geom-
cedures failed to estimate the correct eye number and less than 50%
etry employed for the radiography; an eye appears bigger on the
of the eyes could be detected.
radiograph if it is closer to the X-ray source. For instance, the largest
The total eye volumes were strongly underestimated by both
hole on the radiograph of sample 1 had a diameter of around 235
algorithms in all three cheeses predominately due to underesti-
pixels. From the CT data, diameters around 30 mm were measured.
mation of the number of eyes (Table 1). The deviations of the
These values yielded a pixel size at the plane of the eye of 0.128 mm
average eye radii were smaller due to the power one-third
per pixel. Employing this pixel size instead of the value (0.1 mm per
dependence of the radius on the volume (Equation (1)). Another
pixel) from the calibration with the lead numeral, the volume
reason for the underestimation of the volume followed from the
overestimated the value from the CT measurement by 7% (although
analysis of sample 1: although there were hardly any overlapping
one eye and the crack were not detected). The recalibration of the
eyes, the HT-based procedure yielded a total eye volume of only
pixel size with CT data was only effective because the eyes in
sample 1 were all at a similar height level. A strategy to reduce the
effect of the divergent beam geometry would be to increase the
distance between the X-ray source and the sample, which is
impossible for most X-ray inspection systems (including the system
employed in this study). Furthermore, the KR procedure under-
estimated the radii, and thus, the volume considerably, due to an
extremely restrictive threshold procedure required to obtain a good
separation of the individual eyes (cf. sample 1 in Fig. 1a and b).

3.4. Analysis of spatial distribution and geometrical shape of the

eyes from tomographic data

The statistical analyses of spatial distribution and geometrical

Fig. 2. Distribution of centres of cheese eyes along one radial axis (x-axis, panel a) and
the symmetry axis (z-axis, panel b) compared for sample 2 (solid line) and sample 3
(dashed line). The eyes accumulate in the centre of the cheeses and their distribution
does not match the model of regularly distributed objects in a cylinder.
shape of the eyes were carried out without the CT data of sample 1,
as it contained only 12 eyes. From the radiographic projections in
Fig. 1, one could conclude that the eyes in samples 2 and 3 are
evenly distributed over the cheese volume. In Fig. 2, the distribu-
tion of the eye centres as determined by VG Studio Max from the
CT data is shown, supporting the hypothesis of a symmetric dis-
tribution of the eyes. The eyes accumulate strongly in the centre of
the cheese. Towards the boundary of the cheese, the distribution
decays faster than expected for evenly distributed eyes: In a cylin-
der with homogeneously spread inclusion, their position should
follow a
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
pðxÞ ¼ R2  x2 ; (2)
distribution p(x) law, with R the radius of the base and x the posi-
tion along the coordinate axis. A putative reason for the lack of eyes
154 P. Schuetz et al. / International Dairy Journal 31 (2013) 150e155
Fig. 4. Distribution of geometrical quantifiers for the shape of the cheese eyes for
sample 2 (solid line) and sample 3 (dashed line). Panel a: Distribution of the volume
ratio 3 ¼ V=ð4p=3abcÞ of eye and fit-ellipsoid for sample 2 and sample 3, with V the
determined volume and a, b, and c the extensions of the eye in x-, y-, and z-directions,
respectively. As an inset, exemplary structures for the three regimes of 3 are displayed.
Panel b: histogram of fraction between smallest and largest extension of eye. In the
inset, the smallest and the largest extensions of an eye are compared for a spherical
and a strongly ellipsoidal eye, for illustration.
Fig. 5. Two-dimensional histogram of the volume ratio 3 of eye and fit-ellipsoid versus the fraction of smallest and largest extent of the holes for (a) sample 1, (b) sample 2 and
(c) sample 3. As a spherical eye (both values theoretically close to one), the holes in the indicated area are considered. As insets, the cheese eyes with properties outside the
indicated areas are displayed.
in the vicinity of the cheese surface is the loss of CO2 in the cheese
matrix by gas diffusion through the cheese rind. Furthermore,
a bimodal shape can be observed in the eye distribution along the
x-axis of sample 2 (Fig. 2a). Remarkably, in the same cheese, the
distribution of the eyes along the z-axis displayed a slightly skewed
distribution, hinting at an inhomogeneous eye forming process
(Fig. 2b).
Another key aspect for the quality of cheese is the eye volume
distribution, which was disparate for both cheeses (Fig. 3). The
comparison of the distribution of eye volume confirmed the visu-
ally perceivable differences. Sample 3 had a single population of
eyes with a volume centred at around 0.5 cm3. In contrast, the
volume of the eyes in sample 2 was significantly more broadly
distributed. The considered algorithms for the analysis of the ra-
diographs assume the eyes to be of spherical shape. To verify this
hypothesis based on the CT data, it was checked in a first step
whether the eyes were ellipsoidal and, in a second step, whether
the smallest and largest extensions were equal.
To check the eyes on ellipticity, for each eye, the volume fraction
3 of eye and fit-ellipsoid

3 ¼ V 4pabc (3)
3
was calculated, with a, b, and c the extension of the eye along the
coordinate axes and V the total volume of the eye. For ellipsoidal
eyes, this quantity is close to the value one, whereas for other
shapes, it deviates strongly from this value. As illustrated in Fig. 4,
the volume ratio 3 accumulated in both cheeses close to one (the
shift of the peak originates from discretisation artefacts). Never-
theless, there were 12 eyes for sample 2 and 76 eyes for sample 3,
with an 3 outside the range (0.9e1.1), indicating a different geo-
metric shape (the outliers are analysed below; see inset of Fig. 5).
In addition, to answer the question whether most eyes in the
considered cheeses were spherical or of a different ellipsoidal
shape, e.g. disk-shaped or cigar-shaped, the ratio of the smallest
and largest extension of the eye along any coordinate axis was
calculated. The obtained histograms are shown in Fig. 4b. For
a sphere (Fig. 4b, inset right), this ratio is close to one, whereas for
non-spherical ellipsoids (Fig. 4b, inset left), it differs from one. Both
cheeses displayed a strong population of almost spherical eyes. The
combination of the two properties discussed above allowed
defining a criterion for the recognition of regularly shaped eyes
(dashed area in Fig. 5). For sample 3, the threshold for the ratio of
 P. Schuetz et al. / International Dairy Journal 31 (2013) 150e155
the smallest and the largest extension was adjusted to take into
account the shift due to discretisation artefacts. An inspection of
the eyes outside the highlighted area in Fig. 5 indicated that the
outliers were predominately cracks and coalesced eyes (insets of
Fig. 5). The results obtained demonstrate that a threshold for the
ratio of the smallest and the largest extension, as well as for the
ratio 3 of the eye volume to the fit-ellipse, is a suitable criterion to
detect cracks in a cheese in an automated fashion.
4. Conclusions
Two current procedures for the image analysis of radiographs
reliably detected the number of eyes in cheese with spare eye
formation. In cheeses with a more intense eye formation, the rate of
correctly recognised eyes dropped drastically due to the increased
share of overlapping eyes. Under the assumption of spherical eyes,
the volume of the individual eyes and the total eye volume can be
estimated. However, in the investigated samples, the estimated
total eye volume accounted for less than 51% of the volume deter-
mined from the CT data due to the divergent beam geometry of the
X-ray system.
To illustrate the advantages of the three-dimensional data from
the CT measurement, the spatial distribution of the centre of the
eyes, the volume of the individual eyes and their geometrical shape
were analysed. For the analysed cheeses, a distinct accumulation of
eyes towards the centre of the cheese was observed, which is likely
to be the result of an increased diffusion of CO2 towards the surface
that prevented eye formation in the area near the rind. The analysis
of the geometric features of the eyes indicated that the majority of
the eyes were spherical. The non-spherical eyes were selected by
a simple criterion on the geometrical properties and were pre-
dominately coalesced eyes or cracks. To the best of our knowledge,
this is the first report showing the feasibility of a reliable and
automatable monitoring of cracks in cheeses.
The application of radiography or even computed tomography is
still too expensive for the routine control of eye formation in
commercial cheese production. However, the accurate assessment
of eye formation by CT is a very useful tool for the development and
assessment of eye forming cultures. In addition, this non-
destructive imaging technique tool allows to study in-depth the
effect of other technological factors on eye formation and provides
useful information for a better understanding of the mechanisms
leading to defects during eye formation.
Acknowledgements
We thank Prof. Dr Johan Lang from the Veterinary Faculty of the
University of Bern, Department of Radiology, for the greatly
appreciated CT collaboration, and Karl Schafroth from the research
155
station ALP for the production of the experimental Emmental
cheeses used in this study.
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