Bacterial Colonies on Agar Plate Counting Using Image Processing

—Many pathogenic bacteria could cause human diseases. For example, the important diseases are pneumonia and foodborne illnesses, which could be caused by Pseudomonas sp. and Salmonella sp. respectively. Direct bacteria counting methods from blood or body fluid are the best methods that could give crucial information regarding the health situation of a person, a specialist oversees these methods. For the direct counting, an error could occur from eye fatigue. In this research, image processing was applied to automatic bacteria colony counting. This method can reduce the error. In this research, MATLAB software was applied to bacterial colony counting. Salmonella enterica, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Serratia marcescens, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were selected as samples. This method had an accuracy of more than 90% and could reduce human error and improve counting efficiency.