Experimental study for automatic colony counting system based on image processing

Abstract

Colony number in many colony calculating experiments is counted by manual method at present, therefore it is difficult to get the result quickly and accurately when the number of experimental sample is large. A new automatic colony counting system was developed, which makes use of image-processing technology to feasibly count white bacterial colonies in clear plates according to the RGB color theory. A way of obtaining optimal threshold of segment image was obtained based upon a lot of experiments on the distribution of the colony's chromatic value. It has been proved that the method greatly improves the accuracy and efficiency of the colony counting and the counting result is not affected by inoculation method, shape or size of the colony. It is revealed that automatic detection of colony quantity using image-processing technology could be an effective way.