ANTIMICROBIAL SUSCEPTIBILITY TESTING DEVICE AND METHOD FOR USE WITH PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICES

摘要

A method of performing antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) on a sample uses a reader device that mounts on a mobile phone having a camera. A microtiter plate containing wells preloaded with the bacteria-containing sample, growth medium, and drugs of differing concentrations is loaded into the reader device. The wells are illuminated using an array of illumination sources contained in the reader device. Images of the wells are acquired with the camera of the mobile phone. In one embodiment, the images are transmitted to a separate computing device for processing to classify each well as turbid or not turbid and generating MIC values and a susceptibility characterization for each drug in the panel based on the turbidity classification of the array of wells. The MIC values and the susceptibility characterizations for each drug are transmitted or returned to the mobile phone for display thereon.