Hitachi, Ltd.

Kazushi Tsumura

Kenji Baba

Masakatsu Hiraoka

Shunsuke Nogita

Mikio Yoda

Shoji Watanabe

Naoki Hara

Shunji Mori

The image of microorganisms contained in a sludge of an aeration tank is picked up by an image pickup device having the function of magnifying and picking up microorganism images. Binarizing processing is then made to obtain a binarized image from the resulting gray image, and the binarized image is subjected to thinning processing. The number of pixels of the image left after often the thinning processing is counted to measure the amount of filamentous microorganisms. In this manner, the amount of the filamentous microorganisms can be measured accurately irrespective of their thickness.

Apparatus for measuring the concentration of filamentous microorganisms

A system for controlling a process utilizing filamentous microorganisms is disclosed. The amount of the microorganisms in a medium for growing the filamentous microorganisms is measured, and the control factors associated with the growth of the microorganisms in the medium are controlled on the basis of the measurement of the amount of microorganisms. In the process of measuring the amount of microorganisms, an optical image of a specimen of the medium is formed and scanned two-dimensionally to produce a series of brightness signals corresponding to the brightness distribution of the optical image. The level of the brightness signal is used to determine the amount of the microorganisms contained in the medium.

Filamentous microorganism detector and an apparatus with the detector

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Nagaokakyo, Japan

Kazushi Tsumura