Computer-based system will radically change bacterial colony counting by eliminating tedious manual counting of anaerobic plates
The PetriScan, a computer-based system introduced by Spiral Biotech, is said to revolutionise bacterial colony counting, improving reliability and increasing the efficiency of the operation.
At food and beverage laboratories, accurately counting bacteria colonies is serious work.
QA/QC personnel spend many hours on the tedious, painstaking process of manually counting aerobic plates - often needing to start the counting all over again due to an error.
At approximately one plate per minute, it takes a technician roughly seven hours to manually complete 400 plates.
According to Anthony Pappas, product manager at Spiral Biotech, "PetriScan averages four dry films in about 40 seconds, freeing the technicians to perform other responsibilities." Reliability, however, is the main concern, and Pappas continues, "With the PetriScan, data is entered automatically into the database and results are instantly recorded, so there's no chance for transcription errors." PetriScan users can save, edit, retrieve, and archive sample information as needed; an audit trail saves all changes.
PetriScan's data management system ensures Good Laboratory Practice compliance as well as total compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11 electronic records and electronic signatures. The PetriScan is also used to implement QA/QC and HACCP validation programmes in the food, beverage and dairy industries.
