A Novel Image Processing Approach for Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing via Disk Diffusion Method

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) stands as a cornerstone in modern healthcare, necessitating precise and prompt detection of resistance patterns to guide antimicrobial stewardship. Traditional clinical microbiology techniques, while accurate, suffer from time-intensive protocols and often lead clinicians to resort to empirical antimicrobial therapies. Disk diffusion testing, a widely employed method for determining antimicrobial susceptibility, entails manual measurement of the zone of growth inhibition around antimicrobial disks, posing challenges in efficiency and standardization. To address these issues, automated or semiautomated inhibition zone readers have been proposed. However, existing readers are often costly and necessitate significant changes in laboratory infrastructure and workflow. In response to these limitations, we present a novel tool designed to semi-automate the process of measuring and categorizing inhibition zones, reading antibiotic names, and generating reports.