Student Project at Mendeleev University Speeds Up Antibiotic Quality Control
Graduates of the Department of Information Computer Technologies at the D. I. Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia (RCTU), Lev Plotnikov and Zakhar Akashev, developed a system for automatically determining antibiotic activity as part of their graduation project.
The system is already in use at a laboratory that produces antibiotics for the food industry. Antibiotic activity is tested as follows: wells are made in a tray containing a substrate, the antibiotic is added to them, and the substrate is then inoculated with bacteria. Where the antibiotic is effective, a clear circle — known as the inhibition zone — forms around the well because the bacteria do not survive there. The larger the diameter of the circle, the higher the activity of the antibiotic. Previously, these zones were measured manually, making the process slow and prone to errors.
The students assembled a setup for photographing samples and developed a web application that uploads the images, detects the inhibition zones, measures their diameters and records the results in a table. A laboratory technician can manually adjust the photograph or the detected circle if they disagree with the program's result.
As a result, laboratory technicians receive a completed table showing the inhibition zone diameter and the antibiotic activity for each well. The analysis takes less time, while measurement accuracy has improved.
