Biological material fouling assessment systems and methods

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10360667-B2
Application number	US-201615240761-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 18, 2016
Priority date	Aug 19, 2015
Publication date	Jul 23, 2019
Grant date	Jul 23, 2019

Abstract

Biological material fouling assessment systems and methods are described. According to one aspect, a biological material fouling assessment system includes processing circuitry configured to access image data of an image of a surface of a substrate which has been fouled with biological material, wherein the image data comprises intensity information regarding a plurality of pixels of the image, and wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to process the intensity information regarding the pixels of the image to generate information which is indicative of an amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A biological material fouling assessment system comprising:
processing circuitry configured to access image data of an image of a surface of a substrate which has been fouled with biological material;
wherein the image data comprises intensity information regarding a plurality of pixels of the image;
wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to process the intensity information regarding the pixels of the image to generate information which is indicative of an amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate; and
wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to compare the intensity information of the pixels before and after an application of a filter to generate the information which is indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the image is a color image and the processing circuitry is configured to process the intensity information including separating the pixels into respective ones of a plurality of different color channels according to the colors of the pixels, and wherein the processing circuitry is configured to process the pixels for the different color channels separately to generate the information which is indicative of the amount of the fouling comprising a value for each of the color channels which is indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate.

3. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing circuitry is configured to process the intensity information including using the intensity information to assign the pixels to a plurality of different bins which correspond to respective ones of a plurality of different intensity value ranges and use numbers of the pixels for the bins after the assigning to generate the information which is indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the processing circuitry is configured to further process the intensity information including applying the filter to the numbers of the pixels for the bins which weights the numbers of the pixels for the bins which correspond to the intensity value ranges of higher intensities an increased amount compared with the numbers of the pixels for the bins which correspond to the intensity value ranges of lower intensities.

5. The system of claim 4 wherein the processing circuitry is configured to divide a total number of the pixels for the bins after the application of the filter by a total number of the pixels for the bins prior to the application of the filter to generate the information which is indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate.

6. The system of claim 4 wherein the filter is a ramp filter.

7. The system of claim 1 wherein the generated information is indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon at least substantially an entirety of the surface of the substrate.

8. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing circuitry is configured to process the intensity information regarding at least substantially all of the pixels of the image to generate the information which is indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate.

9. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing circuitry is configured to process the intensity information regarding at least substantially all of the pixels of the image to generate the information which is indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate, and the generated information is calculated using the intensity information of the at least substantially all of the pixels of the image.

10. The system of claim 1 wherein the processing circuitry is configured to apply the filter to the intensity information of the pixels.

11. The system of claim 10 wherein the filter weights the intensity information of the pixels having relatively high-intensity values an increased amount compared with weighting by the filter of the intensity information of the pixels having relatively low-intensity values.

12. A biological material fouling assessment method comprising:
applying a stain to a surface of a substrate which has been fouled with biological material;
after the applying the stain, generating an image of the surface of the substrate including intensity information;
processing the intensity information of the image; and
using the processing, generating information which is indicative of an amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate by using a biofouling growth intensity analysis method that separates a high-contrast signal from the surface of the substrate.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the generating the image comprises generating a digital photograph of at least substantially an entirety of the surface of the substrate in a single exposure using a digital camera.

14. The method of claim 12 wherein the processing comprises separating the intensity information into a plurality of different color channels and processing the intensity information for each of the different color channels separately to generate the information comprising a value for each of the respective color channels and which is indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate.

15. The method of claim 14 further comprising, using a color of the surface of the substrate, selecting the value for one of the color channels as being indicative of the amount of the fouling of the biological material upon the surface of the substrate.

16. The method of claim 12 wherein the intensity information comprises intensity values for a plurality of different pixels of the image and the processing comprises using the intensity values to assign the pixels to a plurality of different bins which correspond to respective ones of a plurality different intensity value ranges, and wherein the generating comprises generating the information using numbers of the pixels for the bins.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein the processing further comprises weighting the numbers of the pixels for bins which correspond to higher intensities more than the numbers of the pixels for bins which correspond to lower intensities.

18. The method of claim 17 wherein the generating the information comprises dividing a total number of the pixels after the weighting by a total number of the pixels prior to the weighting.

19. The method of claim 12 wherein the stain is fluorescent, and the generating the image comprises generating the image of fluorescent emission from the surface of the substrate.

20. The method of claim 12 wherein the stain comprises at least two components, the first of the two components binding with a first bioorganic material and exhibiting a first emission when bound and the second of the two components binding with a second bioorganic material and exhibiting a second emission when bound.

21. The method of claim 20 wherein the first bioorganic material is a protein and the first emission is red, and the second bioorganic material is a nucleic acid and the second emission is fluorescent.

22. The method of claim 12 wherein the processing comprises processing the intensity information regarding at least substantially all of a plurali

Assignees

• Battelle Memorial Institute

Inventors

• Bonheyo George T
• Larimer Curtis J
• Winder Eric M
• Addleman Raymond S
• Jeters Robert T
• Prowant Matthew S
• Cinson Anthony D

Classifications

• G06T7/0002 Primary

  Inspection of images, e.g. flaw detection · CPC title

• G06T7/0004

  Industrial image inspection · CPC title

• G06K9/0014

  Physics · mapped topic

• G01N33/52

  Use of compounds or compositions for colorimetric, spectrophotometric or fluorometric investigation, e.g. use of reagent paper {and including single- and multilayer analytical elements (immunological elements G01N33/54386; involving labelled immunochemicals G01N33/58; for haemoglobin or occult blood G01N33/72)} · CPC title

• G06T1/0007

  Image acquisition · CPC title