Title: Monitoring of Wild Pseudomonas Biofilm Strain Conditions Using Statistical Characterisation of Scanning Electron Microscopy Images,
Abstract: The present paper proposes a novel method of quantification of the variation
in biofilm architecture, in correlation with the alteration of growth
conditions that include, variations of substrate and conditioning layer. The
polymeric biomaterial serving as substrates are widely used in implants and
indwelling medical devices, while the plasma proteins serve as the conditioning
layer. The present method uses descriptive statistics of FESEM images of
biofilms obtained during a variety of growth conditions. We aim to explore here
the texture and fractal analysis techniques, to identify the most
discriminatory features which are capable of predicting the difference in
biofilm growth conditions. We initially extract some statistical features of
biofilm images on bare polymer surfaces, followed by those on the same
substrates adsorbed with two different types of plasma proteins, viz. Bovine
serum albumin (BSA) and Fibronectin (FN), for two different adsorption times.
The present analysis has the potential to act as a futuristic technology for
developing a computerized monitoring system in hospitals with automated image
analysis and feature extraction, which may be used to predict the growth
profile of an emerging biofilm on surgical implants or similar medical
applications.