Automatic Classification and Enumeration of Bacteria Cells Using Image Analysis

Scanning electron microscopic image processing methods are gaining considerable attention in the field of microbiology. It is critical to classify and enumerate accurately the population of microbes in the preparation and express this information to the consumer on the product label. The other crucial application of classification and counting of microbial cell is in the field of medical microbiology to search and detect the causes of diseases. The manual process of bacteria cell inspection is tiresome and eye-straining and depends on the experience of the individual in the laboratory experimenting the bacterial samples, and it is a time-consuming procedure. Various experiments have been made for the replacement of manual observation by automatic inspection of microbiological information. One of the significant projects in this direction is the scanning electron microscopic (SEM) bacteria cell image analysis. Extracting knowledge from image information is a difficult job in biological image processing. This paper proposes a fully automated classification and counting system for lactic acid bacterial cell using image processing methods based on marker-controlled watershed method. Proposed technique ultimately will strengthen the accuracy and reliability of probiotic strain enumeration and classification.