Kabushiki Kaisha Yakult Honsha

Kabushiki Kaisha N-Tech

Tohoshoji Kabushiki Kaisha

Chizuka Kai

Kunimitsu Toyoshima

Shenglan Li

Takashi Nishida

Osamu Yoshida

A container inspection device includes an inlet conveyor, an outlet conveyor, a mounting table having a mounting surface, a chamber portion having an opening in a section of the chamber portion, in which a receiving space is formed when the mounting surface contacts the chamber portion to close the opening, and a transfer. The transfer is movable in the certain direction at a speed greater than the conveying speed of the cartons by the inlet conveyor. The transfer holds multiple ones of the cartons that have been conveyed by the inlet conveyor collectively and conveys the cartons to the mounting surface of the mounting table, and holds the multiple ones of the cartons mounted on the mounting surface collectively and conveys the cartons to the outlet conveyor.

Container inspection device

Colonies growing on a culture medium surface may be more accurately counted with reduced variation in the counts obtained by capturing a plurality of images of the entire culture medium surface, wherein successive images are captured following rotation of the culture medium surface relative to the image capture apparatus by n/360 degrees where n is the number of images to be captured; performing data processing on image data of the entire culture medium surface of the petri dish at each specified angle; and the number of colonies in the petri dish is calculated by performing numerical processing on the number of colonies counted separately at each specified angle.

Method for counting colonies

A method for detecting microorganisms, which comprises: a training step for forming, by a classifier, feature vectors based on color data on individual points within a subject region of training in a culture medium, mapping the points in the culture medium, that are specified by the feature vectors, on a high-dimensional feature space, and linearly separating a set of the points &#x3c8; (x), that are specified by the high-dimensional feature vectors thus obtained, to thereby color-classify the class (C) of the culture medium; and a identifying step for forming, by a classifier, feature vectors based on color data on individual inspection points within a region in the culture medium using image data obtained by capturing an image of the culture medium under cultivation, mapping the inspection points (xj), that are specified by the feature vectors, on a high-dimensional feature space, and determining whether or not the mapped points &#x3c8; (xj), that are specified by the high-dimensional feature vectors thus obtained, belong to the class (C) of the culture medium, thereby identifying a colony based on inspection points not belonging to the class (C) of the culture medium.

Growing community of inventors

Tokyo, Japan

Chizuka Kai