Detection and analysis of waterborne bacterial colonies using image processing and smartphones

Water is an essential and a life sustaining drink to humans and is also important for survival of most other organisms. Potable water is a cause of concern in many developing countries. The conditions in the sub-continent region are more favourable for growth of some dangerous bacterias such as bacillus, e-coli etc. Escherichia coli commonly known as e-coli, is the most common serotype of entero hemorrhagic bacteria which is responsible for numerous foods borne and water borne infections worldwide. Present methods for monitoring waterborne bacterias are often inaccurate, costly and bulkier and also use highly sensitive sensors. In this paper, we have focused on detection of this water borne bacteria using a petrifilm, on which the water samples are diluted at a certain rate for analysis purpose of the incubation time of the bacteria and accuracy of our image processing algorithm. The results are computed using cloud communication on any android smartphone devices via Matlab Mobile.