Influence of Dead Cells Killed by Industrial Biocides (BAC and DBNPA) on Biofilm Formation.

Industrial biocides aim to keep water systems microbiologically controlled and to minimize biofouling. However, the resulting dead cells are usually not removed from the water streams and can influence the growth of the remaining live cells in planktonic and sessile states. This study aims to understand the effect of dead cells killed by industrial biocides-benzalkonium chloride (BAC) and 2,2-dibromo-3-nitrilopropionamide (DBNPA)-on biofilm formation.

3D Optical Coherence Tomography image processing in BISCAP: characterization of biofilm structure and properties.

Motivation: BISCAP is a state-of-the-art tool for automatically characterizing biofilm images obtained from Optical Coherence Tomography. Limited availability of other software tools is reported in the field. BISCAP's first version processes 2D images only.

Characterization of biofilm structure and properties via processing of 2D optical coherence tomography images in BISCAP.

Motivation: Processing of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) biofilm images is currently restricted to a set of custom-made MATLAB scripts. None of the tools currently available for biofilm image processing (including those developed for Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy-CLSM) enable a fully automatic processing of 2D OCT images.

Results: A novel software tool entitled Biofilm Imaging and Structure Classification Automatic Processor (BISCAP) is presented.