Increasing the speed of automated microbial enumeration, with customers reporting over 400 plates per hour being processed with zero errors
Anticipating market demands for increasingly faster microbial enumeration, Spiral Biotech announces the introduction of an advanced version of the QCount, the company's innovative automated microbial enumeration instrument.
Users of the QCount have reported processing over 400 plate counts per hour - easily, and even more importantly, error-free.
A new area-exclusion feature further increases accuracy and flexibility, as it assures that colonies from a contaminated area are not included in the total count.
Another important enhancement includes the addition of a digital FireWire camera that offers a two-fold improvement in resolution over the previous camera, allowing a minimum colony detection-size of 0.15mm.
According to Anthony Pappas, microbiology product manager, besides an increase in speed, accuracy and flexibility, the newly introduced enhancements result in improved user-friendliness.
"Our customers have commented already on the remarkable ease of use of the new QCount version - they particularly appreciate the fact that you can manually exclude areas, add or delete colonies, and that the QCount software will re-calculate colony-forming unit data; flag it, to indicate manual editing, and mark the edits with the operator's initials" says Pappas.
The QCount system includes software and a high-end computer.
Software automatically determines threshold of background uniform lighting configuration and enhanced colony contrast are assured by the QCount's patent-pending lighting configuration technology.
Data is GLP-compliant and can be saved as a spreadsheet, edited, or archived to a CD Rom to satisfy regulatory or auditing requirements.
QCount saves each plate image in the database for printing or re-analysis.
Applications for the QCount include microbiology departments at universities, as well as veterinary institutes, biotechnology laboratories, the pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries and the laboratories of food, beverage, and water supply companies.
