Doctoral Defense in Health Sciences – Andrea Rakel Sigurðardóttir

On Wednesday, September 10, 2025, Andrea Rakel Sigurðardóttir will defend her doctoral thesis in Health Sciences at the Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Iceland.

The thesis is entitled:
Automatic multispectral and imaging methods for quality monitoring of seafood
(Sjálfvirkar fjöllitrófs- og myndgreiningar til gæðaeftirlits á sjávarfangi)

Opponents:

Dr. Frosti Pálsson, Scientist, deCode Genetics, Iceland

Dr. Silje Ottestad, Specialist, Maritech, Norway

Supervisor: Professor María Guðjónsdóttir
Doctoral committee members: Associate Professor Hafsteinn Einarsson; Assistant Professor and Project Manager at Matís Hildur Inga Sveinsdóttir; and Dr. Nette Schultz, Chief Innovation Officer (CINO), Videometer A/S, Denmark.

The defense will be chaired by Associate Professor Ólafur Ögmundarson, Head of the Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition. The ceremony will take place in the Ceremonial Hall of the University of Iceland and will begin at 13:00.

Abstract

Sustainable management of marine resources is essential to ensure long-term seafood availability and protect ocean ecosystems. At the same time, monitoring quality and safety throughout the seafood value chain remains challenging, as seafood is highly perishable, biologically diverse, and sensitive to environmental and handling conditions. Traditional methods, such as sensory evaluation, visual inspection, and laboratory analysis, are effective and well established but can be time-consuming, destructive, or subjective.
As demands for traceability, transparency, product quality, and process efficiency grow, there is a clear need for objective, rapid, and non-destructive techniques.

This thesis investigated the potential of imaging technologies, particularly multispectral imaging (MSI), combined with chemometrics, machine learning, and deep learning, to automate quality assessment and monitoring tasks in the seafood industry. The work comprises four scientific papers addressing different applications: age determination of fish otoliths, nematode detection in whitefish fillets, freshness assessment of whole cod, and quality evaluation of brown seaweed.
Overall, the findings demonstrate that combining imaging with data-driven modelling can automate diverse quality and resource monitoring tasks in the seafood industry, with strong potential for wider application and opportunities for further research and technological development.

About the doctoral candidate

Andrea Rakel Sigurðardóttir was born in 1992 in Reykjavík. She graduated from the Natural Science track at Kvennaskólinn in Reykjavík in 2011. In 2017 she began her studies at the University of Iceland, where she completed a B.Sc. in Software Engineering in 2020 and an M.Sc. in Computational Engineering in 2022. Later that year, she embarked on an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program at the Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Iceland. Alongside her doctoral studies, Andrea has taught and supervised students at both the Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Food Science and Nutrition.

Her parents are Sigurður Ingvar Hjaltason and Magnea Helga Magnúsdóttir. Andrea is in a relationship with Hlynur Davíð Löve, and they have two children: Ýmir Frosti (9) and Embla Sól (5).