Patent Document ID: 9576181
Application ID: 14441471
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for defining an isolation area around an object of interest in a cell culture vessel, the method comprising: obtaining one or more images of the cell culture vessel using one or more of a plurality of illumination sources, each illumination source being capable of illuminating the vessel from a different direction; selecting an image or combination of images for further processing; applying a circular object detection transformation to identify one or more objects of interest being substantially circular objects in the cell culture vessel, the one or more objects of interest being representative of isolated colonies in the cell culture vessel and determining a center of an object of interest; applying a binarizing step to obtain a binarized image of the object of interest and other objects, wherein a center of the binarized image corresponds to the center of the object of interest; iteratively forming concentric circles with increasing radius, wherein the concentric circles are centered on the center of the binarized image; identifying coronas, wherein a corona is delimited by two circles having successive radius values; and for each corona: determining a presence and a location of other objects located in the corona to determine the presence and the location of the other objects, and determining a clearance angle defining an angular sector free of the other objects around the object of interest to define an isolation area around the object of interest and to define the availability of the object of interest to be picked.