In Situ Detection and Identification of Microorganisms at Single Colony Resolution Using Spectral Imaging Technique

Abstract

In situ detection and identification of microorganisms in the environment are important in general microbial ecology. Also the rapid inspection of microbial contamination at food processing plant is urgent task. We propose a method of detecting and identifying microorganisms for rapid inspection using spectral imaging technique. Spectral images of photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic bacterial colonies having different absorption spectra in near infrared wavelength region were measured directly from Petri dish. Bacterial region in the images was first detected and then identified using multiple discriminant analysis. Detection and identification errors for various sized colonies were analyzed. As the result, colonies with diameters of 100 and 300 μm were detected and identified with sufficient accuracy, respectively. This means the time for detection and identification can be shorten less than a half and about several weeks compared with the conventional methods.KeywordsSpectral ImagingColony SizeAbsorption ImageRhodopseudomonas PalustrisMultiple Discriminant AnalysisThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.