mASTer Software Speeds up Diagnosis of Superbug Antibiotic Resistance

Synbiosis, a long-established, expert manufacturer of automated microbiological systems, today introduced its mASTer (measuring Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing easily and rapidly) software. This revolutionary software saves microbiologists hours of work by reproducibly measuring zones around antibiotic discs on AST (Antibiotic Sensitivity Testing) plates and then automatically producing a bacteria’s antibiotic SIR (Susceptible, Intermediate, Resistant) category.

The versatile mASTer software can be used to analyze AST plate images generated by a Synbiosis ProtoCOL 3 automated zone measurement system or from a Syngene G:BOX image analyzer. Using a ProtoCOL 3 system with the new mASTer software allows scientists to work in a high throughput batch mode to accurately measure zones around antibiotic sensitivity discs. With the G:BOX, microbiologists simply generate monochrome TIFF or JPEG images of their AST plates and import them into the mASTer software for analysis.

The mASTer software will at the touch of a button, automatically measure inhibition zones on the true to life images and compare the results to data from all the tested microbes that have breakpoint values in the EUCAST database. The software then lists the SIR category and suggests which antibiotics the bacteria are sensitive to, providing guidance for treatment options, in a fraction of the time it would normally take to perform these tasks manually.

The new mASTer software is GLP compliant, providing zone measurements and plate images which can be transferred and stored in Excel. This eliminates measuring, keying and data transfer errors, producing fully traceable results, which are consistent from microbiologist to microbiologist. These archived results are suitable for generating reports for audit by regulatory authorities and can also be used by scientists to monitor and measure superbug resistance trends over time.

“Manually measuring antibiotic inhibition zones with calipers or a ruler and recording results are repetitive, error prone activities, which produces subjective data that varies depending on which scientist is doing it,” explains Kate George, Divisional Manager at Synbiosis, “our new mASTer software provides an excellent solution to these problems by rapidly automating this process and analysis. Microbiologists wanting to speed up diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of antibiotic resistant superbugs should trial the mASTer software in their lab.”