Citizen Science/Open Colony Counter Project

Specifications
Vincent 13:06, 1 August 2010 (EDT): feel free to comment.

Features

 * General:
 * can detect and count microbial colonies
 * accepted plate format: 60-90mm plates or multi-well plate format
 * desktop device for the wetlab bench
 * requires a PC (windows, osx, or linux)
 * Laser-cut design for the casing
 * lab automation friendly design
 * Open Source design
 * Available Measurements:
 * colony count
 * individual colony properties (size, roundness, position)
 * export in CSV format or local database
 * PDF/HTML report with overlaid image with detection results + colony statistics
 * Image processing:
 * one-step processing for the user
 * colony count in less than 3 seconds.
 * automatic background detection
 * utilizes LED illumination to optimize contrast between colonies and substrate.
 * possible manual colony count editing for improved count.
 * USB Webcam as an image acquisition device

User case: typical use

 * 1) the user places his/her plate inside the colony counter
 * 2) the user opens the colony counting application on the attached PC
 * 3) the user triggers the image acquistion and counting by pressing a single button
 * 4) results are displayed as an overlay on the acquired image
 * 5) if required, the user can adapt image processing parameters to improve detection
 * 6) the user can then export results in various format (CSV, HTML, PDF)

Technological stack under investigation:
Vincent 13:06, 1 August 2010 (EDT): feel free to comment.
 * Image acquisition device: USB Webcam-based
 * Light source: white LEDs, 470nm LEDs for GFP-like detection
 * Image processing engine: OpenCV library
 * Laser cut design for the casing