Droplet CFU counting

The "Droplet CFU counting" analysis pipeline is a robust general-purpose AI-based model for counting colonies in droplets on Omnitrays, either based on an end-point image or throughout a time-series.

Examples

Show examples

24 or 96-well grids on omnitrays

Example of an environmental monitoring plate with AI-based counting and detection of colonies of differing morphology

Reporting formats

The most common output format for droplet CFU counting will be a simple CSV file with the plate position, droplet position and enumeration result. The result will be given as a count. If the droplet is too numerous to count, by default the result will be labelled "TNTC". Typically, anything above 40 colonies in a 10ul droplet would be labelled TNTC, but it is possible for the model to count up to 100+ distinct colonies in a single droplet.

It is possible to input sample names (for example barcodes) directly into the Reshape platform through the user interface or through automated sample tracking.

For certain applications, it's desirable to be able to add comments/flag certain edge cases. This could for example be an irregularly placed droplet. This is also possible as part of the pipeline output, and is usually reported with a "comment" column:

Accuracy

Validation is typically part of any implementation to document the accuracy of the platform versus a human reference count. The exact accuracy is dependent on the specific methods, but typically, the accuracy exceeds the repeatability between human operators.