Real-time incubator and colony counter
The ScanStation is a real-time incubator and colony counting station designed for the pharmaceutical, agro-food and cosmetic industries as well as research. It provides centralized incubation, detection and colony counting of 100 Petri dishes simultaneously. In classical Pasteurian microbiology, the Petri dish must be placed in an incubator for 24h and up to 5 days. Then a time-consuming reading operation is performed to count colonies. The operator may notice the presence of invasive or confluent colonies mixed with air bubbles or debris, increasing the margin of error on the final result. The ScanStation provides results as soon as 6 hours after the beginning of the incubation which is up to 3 times sooner, faster and with unequalled accuracy. The ScanStation detects and counts colonies as soon as they appear at the beginning of the incubation. It is a real-time process, providing anticipated results, saving time and allowing earlier release of production batches. With this new technology, microbiologists can actually see, in real-time, the video of bacterial growth on the Petri dishes. This innovation is a mix between classic methods with the Petri dish and the latest innovations in robotic and computing, providing analyses’ results with unequalled accuracy and much sooner. The major innovation of the ScanStation is the automatic counting of the colonies at an early stage of their development, starting at the beginning of the incubation cycle. Up to 100 Petri dishes are counted every 30 minutes throughout the process, delivering a video recording of the bacterial growth. Final results are known 3 times sooner and faster because up to 100 Petri dishes are processed simultaneously and with superior accuracy as colonies are detected before clustering or covering can occur.
