New Microbiology Imaging Software Offers Fast, Accurate Analysis of Colony Numbers and Zone Sizes

Synbiosis, a world-leading manufacturer of automated microbiological systems, is pleased to introduce its new ProtoCOL V1.4 colony counting and inhibition zone sizing software, designed to save microbiologists valuable time, by automating many routine plate based image analysis tasks.

The new ProtoCOL software is built for maximum flexibility and can be used to analyse images of the same or different coloured colonies on pour, spiral or surface inoculated plates and 3M™ Petrifilm™, as well as measure inhibition zones on Single Radial Immunodiffusion (SRD) plates, and around antibiotic disks. The software, based on the latest Windows platform, has all the useful icons on one screen, so it is quick and simple for microbiologists to navigate and begin their image capture and analysis, with minimal training.

The ProtoCOL V1.4 software is Good Laboratory Practice compliant and supports 21CFR Part 11. It features many innovations for measuring zone sizes, including a gantry control system to allow microbiologists to automatically image large SRD plates. The software also measures inhibition zones from the edge of an antibiotic disc, and automatically subtracts disc diameter sizes to provide results as a zone size only. This not only saves manual calculation time but also permits scientists to perform tests with different antibiotic disc sizes on one plate. The zone size results are automatically transcribed into Excel, and either an antibiotic or vaccine name can be entered into the database, which means it is easy to produce a full, secure audit trail for each specific therapy.

Martin Smith of Synbiosis commented: “Our new software has taken over a year of technical development and includes many excellent features requested by ProtoCOL users. We are delighted with its performance and are confident that where microbiologists are manually counting or measuring thousands of colonies and inhibition zones every day, using the new software will save countless hours, making ProtoCOL V1.4 an essential tool for quality control and research laboratories.”