公开(公告)号：US12247197B2

公开(公告)日：2025-03-11

申请号：US18012433

申请日：2021-06-25

Applicant: QVELLA CORPORATION

Inventor： Samad Talebpour ,  Anna Khimchenko ,  Maryam Asadishekari ,  Stephen Wesley Leonard

IPC: G06K9/62 ,  C12N1/20 ,  G02B21/36 ,  G06T5/50 ,  G06T5/70 ,  G06V10/147 ,  G06V10/774 ,  G06V10/82 ,  G06V20/69

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for classifying microbial cells according to morphological features of microcolonies. A dark-field objective is employed to acquire a dark-field image of a microcolony during a microcolony growth phase that is characterized by phenotypic expression of microcolony morphological features which evolve with time and are differentiated among classes of microbial cell types. The dark-field image is processed to classify the microcolony according to two or more microbial cell types, such as Gram status and/or speciation. The dark-field objective may have a numerical aperture selected to facilitate the imaging of microcolony morphological features, residing, for example, between 0.15 and 0.35. A set of dark-field images of a microcolony may be collected during the microcolony growth phase and processed to classify the microcolony. Classification may be performed according to a temporal ordering of the dark-field images, for example, using a recurrent neural network.