The Determination of Microbicidal Effects of Corona Discharge Using the Image Analysis

This paper presents an experimental apparatus for the decontamination and sterilization of water suspension of microorganisms and demonstrates the application of image analysis for the evaluation of decontamination efficiency by automatic counting of colonies on surface of cultivating medium. It was shown that the presented procedure of image analysis is adequate for this problem. The error of the automated cfu counting procedure is less than 5% in the comparison with manual counting. From the microbiological point of view it was found, that total inhibition of all four bacterial species and one of yeast occurs after 3 and 6 minutes of exposition to the corona discharge. Total inhibition of mould spores occurs after 20 minutes for one of used species only but it does not occurs even after 30 minutes of exposition for next two species under study.