Morphological characterisation of yeast colony growth on solid media using image processing

To rapidly determine the effect of environmental factors on yeast growth, a cell counting and colony sizing image analysis method was developed to characterise colony growth on solid media. A digitised microscopic image of the yeast was analysed using the Watershed algorithm for cell number determination and a morphological edge detection for colony size determination. The influence of temperature and physiological stress on yeast growth was then investigated over 12.5 h and data extracted by the image analysis method. © Rapid Science Ltd. 1998