Title: Automated Gram-staining characterisation of bacterial cells using colour and cell wall properties

Authors: P.S. Hiremath; Parashuram Bannigidad

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, Gulbarga University, Gulbarga 585 106, Karnataka, India. ' Department of Computer Science, Gulbarga University, Gulbarga 585 106, Karnataka, India

Abstract: In this paper, the Gram-staining technique is used as a tool for the differentiation of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, as a first step to determine the identity of a particular bacterial sample. The automated image analysis has been developed for the monitoring of the Gram-staining characteristics of bacteria based on their colour and cell wall structure. The experimental results are compared with manual results obtained by microbiological expert. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

Keywords: gram staining; colour image analysis; thresholding; histogram entropy; edge detection; cell walls; bacterial cells.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2011.043298

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2011 Vol.7 No.3, pp.257 - 265

Published online: 21 Jan 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article