Background To reach faster diagnosis of sanitary control and to reduce human manipulations, rapid microbiology develops methods and systems allowing to detect these contaminations early. The company Advencis conceived an innovative device able to follow in real-time the contaminations during the incubation process.

Methods The aim is to keep the traditional method (Petri dishes with lid), and this, without any modification of the sample. This method is based on the monitoring of the Petri dishes surface by image processing while incubating the samples. The iterative registration method developed here is based on small objects lying on the growing surface.

Results A large number of image sequences of various samples were tested. The results show that this method is quite efficient to follow and detect the variations on the sample.

Conclusion Some specific cases may be improved in a future algorithm version.