Patent ID: 9109194
Filing Date: 2015-08-18
Classification: C12M

Abstract:
1. A device for harvesting a bacterial colony, comprising: an upper illumination unit comprising a high-angle illumination unit and a low-angle illumination unit, the high-angle illumination unit and the low angle illumination unit both configured to illuminate a bacterial culture on a culture medium received in a first vessel, which is optically transparent, from above; a transmitted illumination unit configured to illuminate the bacterial culture by transmitting the optically transparent vessel and the culture medium with illumination light; an imaging unit configured to sequentially acquire an image the bacterial culture illuminated by high-angle illumination unit of the upper illumination unit, an image of the bacterial culture illuminated by the low-angle illumination of the upper illumination unit, wherein said low-angle illumination image is not produced from directly reflected light and includes color information, and an image of the bacterial culture illuminated by the transmitted illumination unit; an image processing unit configured to extract an image of a bacterial colony within the bacterial culture to be harvested by processing the image of the bacterial culture illuminated by the high-angle illumination unit of the upper illumination unit, the image of the bacterial culture illuminated by the low-angle illumination unit, and the image of the bacterial culture illuminated by the transmitted illumination unit; a harvesting unit configured to harvest from the culture medium the bacterial colony corresponding to the image extracted by the image processing unit move the harvested bacterial colony to a second vessel; and a harvested bacteria number calculating unit configured to calculate the number of harvested bacteria required to prepare a bacterial liquid having a predetermined concentration by using thickness information of the bacterial colony of several steps prepared in advance according to the size of an area of the bacterial colony from the image of the bacterial colony extracted with the image processing unit.