3M Food Safety has introduced its 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced, a new automation technology that gives food safety professionals new options to rapidly and accurately image, count and document microbiological colonies on 3M Petrifilm Plates indicator tests.
By rapidly automating the colony-counting step of 3M Petrifilm Plates, the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced saves food safety labs time and increases productivity.
The 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced can improve laboratory efficiency with fixed artificial intelligence (AI) networks to enumerate 3M Petrifilm Plates, which can get users results in 4-6 seconds or up to 900 plates per hour. The new product also provides accurate colony counting with proactive, easy-to-use software that simplifies results storage and data analytics, plus produces automated data and reports.
The new equipment is a small, peripheral device containing a five-megapixel camera and versatile bar code reader. The device utilises fixed artificial intelligence networks to enumerate 3M Petrifilm Plates. The plates are inserted into the device, with imaging and information automatically displaying on a USB-connected computer in less than six seconds, processing up to 900 plates per hour.
The new equipment is a small, peripheral device containing a five-megapixel camera and versatile bar code reader
The device can enumerate 10 3M Petrifilm Plates and the Staph Express Disk and includes software that allows technicians to edit results and add other relevant sample information. A study conducted found up to 94% reduced time to enumerate 3M Petrifilm Plates when using the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced (observed on the 3M Petrifilm Aerobic Count Plate with High Counts).
"Food safety is always a top concern globally, but challenges related to COVID-19 have put additional pressure on organisations to maximise resources," said Elliott Zell, 3M Food Safety global new product marketing manager. "3M is in a unique position to help the food-and-beverage industry maximise the efficiency of the critical tests it manages each day, and we have invested in advanced hardware and software to help labs reduce tedious tasks in favour of strategic activities."
Zell enthuses about how the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced uses automation to help increase throughput in testing labs.
This introduction of the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced is 3M Food Safety's second automation offering within the last two years for food-and-beverage manufacturers looking to streamline their operations and modernise their laboratories. In 2019, 3M announced it had partnered with Hamilton Company to offer food testing laboratories interoperability between the Hamilton foodInspect NIMBUS automated multichannel pipetting technology and the award-winning 3M Molecular Detection System.