Deep learning approach to bacterial colony classification

PLoS One. 2017 Sep 14;12(9):e0184554. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0184554. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

In microbiology it is diagnostically useful to recognize various genera and species of bacteria. It can be achieved using computer-aided methods, which make the recognition processes more automatic and thus significantly reduce the time necessary for the classification. Moreover, in case of diagnostic uncertainty (the misleading similarity in shape or structure of bacterial cells), such methods can minimize the risk of incorrect recognition. In this article, we apply the state of the art method for texture analysis to classify genera and species of bacteria. This method uses deep Convolutional Neural Networks to obtain image descriptors, which are then encoded and classified with Support Vector Machine or Random Forest. To evaluate this approach and to make it comparable with other approaches, we provide a new dataset of images. DIBaS dataset (Digital Image of Bacterial Species) contains 660 images with 33 different genera and species of bacteria.

MeSH terms

  • Bacteria / classification*
  • Databases, Factual
  • Machine Learning
  • Neural Networks, Computer*
  • Support Vector Machine

Grants and funding

The work of B. Zieliński was supported by the National Science Centre (Poland) under grant agreement no 2015/19/D/ST6/01215; 2016-2019. The work of P. Spurek was supported by the National Science Centre (Poland) under grant agreement no. 2015/19/D/ST6/01472; 2016-2019. The work of K. Misztal was supported by the National Science Centre (Poland) under grant agreement no. 2012/07/N/ST6/02192; 2012-2017.This research was supported in part by PL-Grid infrastructure.