In this work, computer vision techniques were applied to estimate the shrinkages of cooked meat joints during the air-blast cooling process. Three kinds of shrinkage were evaluated in the current research, i.e. shrinkages of major and minor axes, volume, and surface area. Since beef joints are normally in irregular ellipse shape, a region-based ellipse fitting method was employed to measure their major and minor axes before and after cooling. To calculate their volume and surface area, the images of beef samples were divided into numerous cross sections and each cross section was considered as a cylindrical disc. Based on the obtained values of beef joints using image processing techniques, linear models (r(2) > 0.990) were developed for predicting the shrinkages of major and minor axes, volume, and surface area, respectively. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.