Biospeckle techniques for evaluating the radial growth rate of a fungal colony

Abstract

Microorganisms play essential roles in the environment, forming symbiotic relationships with plants and animals, though many can be pathogenic and cause significant harm. Investigating microorganism development through monitoring their radial growth offers valuable insights into growth kinetics, biomass, and metabolite synthesis, emphasizing the need for advanced methodologies in radial growth calculation. We utilize laser-based biospeckle techniques to visualize microorganism activity on semi-solid culture media and propose a comprehensive framework to determine the radial growth curve and its rate. This framework efficiently extracts these growth parameters from biospeckle microorganism patterns, as demonstrated through experimental validation. Additionally, we propose a new procedure, to the best of our knowledge, for calculating optimal parameters within the proposed framework, which impacts radial growth calculation. This procedure was tested through a series of experiments, demonstrating its effectiveness in identifying optimal parameters using the biospeckle patterns of microorganism colonies under various conditions. The results highlight the improvement in radial growth calculation when these parameters are applied within the proposed framework.