Digital microscopic bacterial cell growth analysis and cell division time determination for Escherichia coli using fuzzy inference system

Abstract

The objective of the present study is to develop an automated tool to determine the bacterial cell growth phases and division time of the individual cell of a bacterial population. The proposed strategy is to capture digital images of cells growing on agar and to use changes in the dimensions of each cell to identify a parameter that could be used to estimate the division time. The geometric features of cells are used to estimate the cell size properties, which are useful for cell division time determination. The classification of cell growth phases has been done using fuzzy inference system. The experimental results are compared with the manual results obtained by the microbiology expert and demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.