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Electronic Tongue for Wine Discrimination, using PCA and ANN

Conference Paper · October 2014

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 Electronic Tongue for Wine Discrimination, using
PCA and ANN

Yennifer Yuliana Ríos Díaz Cristhian Manuel Durán Acevedo

Faculty of Engineering and Architecture Faculty of Engineering and Architecture
Research Group in Multisensory Systems and Pattern Research Group in Multisensory Systems and Pattern
Recognition Recognition
Universidad de Pamplona Universidad de Pamplona
Pamplona (N.S), Colombia Pamplona (N.S), Colombia
yennifer_rios@hotmail.com cmduran@unipamplona.edu.co

Abstract— This article explains the discrimination of wines through

an electronic tongue, using machine learning algorithms and signal II. MEASUREMENT AND ANALYSIS SYSTEM THROUGH
processing techniques: Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and ELECTRONINC TONGUE
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), where the model of the multilayer
perceptron was implemented. A database for wine quality was used A. Biological sytem
and a study was conducted with a green wine of northeastern In the sense of taste, the taste buds formed by sensory
Portugal. The analysis of data and subsequent processing was receptors or chemoreceptors translate a chemical signal into an
performed for two different types of wine; White and Red. The electrical pulse to the detection of the five basic tastes (sour,
proposed method was able to classify and identify each of the
sweet, salty, bitter and umami). Each receptor has dendrite at
categories of wine, giving a success rate of 98% with ANN and a
its end and in contact with the chemical in food, it generates
variance of 98%.
nerve impulses that are transmitted to the brain and converted,
through recognition systems, in the perception of a particular
Keywords— Electronic tongue; principal component analysis; flavor. The frequency at which these pulses are repeated
artificial neural networks; wines, MLP. indicates the intensity of flavor [1,2,3,4].
The table 1 summarizes the chemicals that produce the
taste, the threshold detectable by humans and the physiological
I. INTRODUCTION
importance.
Industries producing wine usually do research to determine TABLE I. Basic Flavors
physical and chemical characteristics that help in the
assessment of the quality of the product. Also these features PHYSIOLOGICAL
TASTE CHEMICALS THRESHOLD IMPORTANCE
may indicate variations in the harvest and identification of the Sweet Sucrose, glucose, 10 mM (Sucrose) Source of Energy
type and origin appellation for the case of wine. glycine, L-alanine,
Generally, flavor analysis is performed by tasting groups aspartame
Salty NaCl, KCl, KBr 10 mM (NaCl) Supplying minerals
formed by skilled people who are sensitive to the product. Acido H + produced by 0,9 mM (HCl) Signal Decomposition
Since this process is repeated several times, the receptor HCl, citric acid,
acetic acid
organs of the biological systems of people saturates, affecting Bitter Quinine, caffeine, 8 mM (quinine) Poison signal
the sensitivity and objectivity of the expert and therefore the picric acid,
MgSO4, L-
reproducibility of the measurements [1]. tryptophan
Electronic tongues perform the characterization of the Umami Monosodium 2 mM (MSG) Provision of amino
sample by using an electrochemical sensor system, which is glutamate (MSG), acids and nucleotides
disodium inosinate
responsible for obtaining the information of all the relevant (IMP),
parameters of the product and generating a pattern. Then, each disodium guanylate
(GMP)
pattern is analyzed by multivariate statistical methods or
artificial neural networks (ANN).
B. Artificial system
Based on multiple sensors with sensitivity to different
compounds of the sample, and combined with tools for
recognition or multivariate analyzes, an artificial system is
able to classify samples [5].
 Potentiometric tongues were the first ones to appear and
the most popular. Its mode of operation is the most similar to
the biological taste. They work using the measurement of the
equilibrium potential generated when and electrode is
introduced in the sample. Dissemination of the electronic
tongue is such that exists in the commercial market as the
AlphaMOS tongue, (see Fig. 1), and TS-5000Z [6].
Fig. 1. Tongue of AlphaMOS electronics ASTREE
There are a variety of applications in the food market for
the potentiometric tongues, mainly related to alcoholic and
non-alcoholic beverages. In the dairy products market, the
electronic tongue has also made its entrance by classifying
different types of fermentation and storage or classifying
different types of brands. In fruits and vegetables the
electronic tongue has been used for the identification of apple
variety and detection of gluten [7,8,9].
The potentiometric electronic tongues have also been
employed in the pharmaceutical industry, to assess different
methodologies to disguise the taste of quinine; another
application helps in the analysis of the quality of water by
measuring heavy metals [10].
An electronic measurement system using a potentiometric
tongue, consists of an input amplifier stage, responsible for
amplifying the voltage and preventing current flow through
the electrochemical cell. The next stage is formed by a low-
pass filter, in charge of removing the noise from undesirable
frequencies. All the measurements use a reference electrode
connected to the ground of the circuit. In Fig. 2 a block
diagram of a system for potentiometric measurements is
shown; it is formed by amplifying, filtering, data acquisition
and processing stages.
Fig. 2. Block diagram of an electronic system for potentiometric measures
The voltammetric tongue, unlike the potentiometric,
requires the application of different voltages in the electrodes.
Data is extracted from the voltammograms in some systems
while in other cases the information of the change of current is
used.
In Fig. 3, the required elements to perform a voltammetric
tests are shown. The voltage control of the cell and the current
measurement is performed using a potentiostat, the acquisition
system and signal generation sets the analogic voltage to be
applied to the potentiostat between the reference electrode and
the working electrode. The potentiostat measures the applied
voltage and the current through the working electrode and
transmits the signals to the system for subsequent digitization.
Fig. 3. Block diagram of an electronic system for voltammetric measurements
The potentiostat (see Fig. 4), applies a controlled voltage
between the reference electrode and the working electrode that
is independent of the processes occurring at the auxiliary
electrode, in turn must perform the measurement of the current
flowing through the working electrode; it is important to
ensure that there is no current flowing through the reference
electrode.
Fig. 4. Outline and electrodes of a potentiostat
ET: Working Electrode ΔV: voltage applied between ET and ER
ER: Reference Electrode ΔI = 0: Current through ET and ER
EA: Auxiliary Electrode ΔI: Current through ET and EA
C. Methods of data analysis
For the analysis of samples in the electronic tongues
primarily two methods were used:
 Principal components analysis (PCA)
This method seeks the principal components by means of
the variance of the original parameters. It is used to extract the
maximum information from the response of the sensors. A
sensor that presents very small variations between different
samples does not give much information and can be removed
[11]. The PCA can be used as a tool for unsupervised
classification and sometimes also used as a stage prior to
further analysis, since it allows an overview of all the data
collected. For example, using a two dimensional
representation of the measurements abnormal test samples can
be detected; that is, samples whose behavior does not match
with the majority of the samples [12].
 Artificial neural network (ANN) As observed, a lineal separation of the classes cannot be made,
An ANN is a system consisting of a number of artificial indicating that for the two dimensional representation, the
neurons working in parallel, processing and storing data to principal components are similar for the high quality and the
perform a specific function according to their training. Neural low quality samples. It suggests that a bigger dimensionality
networks require fewer samples to be trained, they are easy to of data may be more suitable for this analysis.
program and are capable of manage situations of drifts in the
sensor response. On the other hand, they do not require the Fig. 5. PCA quality white wine
same number of samples per category since they can learn
events quickly [13, 14, 15, 16].
One of the topologies most commonly used is the
Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), where you have an input layer
that receives the data, one or more hidden layers of neurons,
where the processing is done and the output layer, where the
neurons generate the final response: the classification. This
type of networks uses supervised training algorithms, mainly
based on a generalized least mean squares algorithm (LMS).
There are many methods for training offering different
advantages. One of the most used methods is the Levenber-
Marquard, which offers a good training time, converging fast
to the minimum [17, 18].

III. MEASUREMENTS
The electronic tongue as described before, makes an
acquisition process, then the data is analyzed and a final stage
gives the classification result.

A. Database For the database for appellation of wine, once completed

To validate the designed classification system, wine is the normalization process, a PCA analysis was performed. The
used as the product. The quality of red wine and white wine is Fig 7 shows the results. A complete separation of the three
determined and also the appellation for three kinds of wine. classes of wine can be made since the supplied data has a very
The database used for appellation was obtained from wine distinguishable organoleptic characteristics when is reduced to
of the same geographical area, but from different producers. It two dimensions.
consists of the most common physicochemical characteristics:
organoleptic features 13 for 178 wine samples divided into 59 Fig. 6. PCA quality red wine
for class 1, 71 samples for class 2 and 48 for class 3.
B. Product Processing and classification
In the electronic tongues each sensor has a particular
response to each sample provided. In order to simplify the
processing of these signals, a preprocessing of the data was
performed. All values were normalized to have amplitude
between 1 and -1.
For the database of wine quality, the study was conducted
for the unique variety of green wine from the northeast region
of Portugal. This product has a medium level of alcohol in
comparison with other types and its refreshing nature is
appreciated by the consumers.
The analysis was made for two varieties of this type: white
wine and red wine [19].
The database for this study was composed by 1599 samples of
red wine and 4898 samples of white wine. Each sample had 11
features and a quality level from 0 (bad) to 10 (excellent).
 Principal component analysis (PCA)
Once the preprocessing was made, the PCA was performed
reducing the data into two dimensions as shown in Fig. 5 and
Fig. 6 where high quality samples (quality score higher than 5)
are marked in blue and low quality samples are marked in red.
Fig. 7. PCA origin wine The classification by ANNs for red wine, was performed
using the same architecture than the one used for the withe
wine: a 5-layer network with 28 neurons in their hidden
layers. The percentage error was 9% in the test set and mean
least square error was lower than 0.4 after the sixth epoch in
training.
Just as with white wine we proceeded to do the validation
of the network of red wine. Fig.9, shows the histogram of the
network where an effectiveness of 90% was achieved.

Fig. 9. Validation quality red wine

 Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)

After the normalization process, all the samples were dived
into two sets: training and test. For the samples of white wine,
an ANN with 5 hidden layers, each one with 28 neurons, had
the best results with a percentage error of 2% in the test set
and a training mean least square error lower than 0.2 after the
second epoch of training.
Fig. 8 shows, by means of a histogram the database and In the database of appellation of wine, classification by
the result of the neural network. A total effectiveness of 98% neural networks was performed and a network of one layer
was achieved. The histogram shows that the database and the was with one neuron in the hidden layer achieved a fully
results of classification network are very similar; also, with successful classification, i.e. a percentage error of 0% in the
this interface, stored trained ANNs can be load to study or test set and mean square error equals to 0 after the fifth epoch
validate new data. New samples can be entered manually by of training. To validate the network the same procedure used
filling the blank spaces located at the bottom of the interface. for the other databases was performed. The network scored an
For the example shown in fig. 8, the ANN classified the effectiveness of 100% (see Fig. 10).
sample in the low quality group.
Fig.10. Origin validation red wine
Fig. 8. Validation quality white wine
 IV. CONCLUSIONS
This preliminary study shows that voltammetric electronic
tongues are still widely used at present due to the method of
capture, and the nature of the sensor which is not based on the
chemistry but on electrical signals; also, they do not require
specific chemical samples and the electronic instrumentation
is inexpensive.
In the classification of compounds of wines, developed in
the present study, it was shown that the classical PCA and
ANN techniques are practical and effective, although it is
important to have an optimal data acquisition system for
proper operation. It is for this reason that for a classifier
system to function properly, besides of having a good method
of classification, the database must be appropriated and
reliable.
For data classification using cyclic voltammetry was
convenient to use the method of PCA, since it could obtain a
better discrimination of the samples while the classification
using neural networks for compounds with similar
organoleptic characteristics presented errors when performing
training and validation results. This could indicate that the
given samples were not completely separable.
It is worth to mention that the analysis of the
characteristics of products have led to an increased research
in the area of the physiology of the human senses, leading to
the design and implementation of measurement tools, such as
electronic tongues, which have come to gain greater
acceptance in different fields of application in the food
industry.
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