During ripening of salami, colour changes occur due to oxidation phenomena involving myoglobin. Moreover,
shrinkage due to dehydration results in aspect modifications, mainly ascribable to fat aggregation. The aim of
this work was the application of image analysis (IA) and multivariate image analysis (MIA) techniques to the
study of colour and aspect changes occurring in salami during ripening. IA results showed that red, green, blue,
and intensity parameters decreased due to the development of a global darker colour, while Heterogeneity
increased due to fat aggregation. By applying MIA, different salami slice areas corresponding to fat and three different
degrees of oxidised meat were identified and quantified. It was thus possible to study the trend of these
different areas as a function of ripening, making objective an evaluation usually performed by subjective visual
inspection.