A Comprehensive Survey with Quantitative Comparison of Image Analysis Methods for Microorganism Biovolume Measurements

TL;DR

This survey reviews over 62 articles on digital image analysis methods for microorganism biovolume measurement, highlighting advancements, classifications, and applications to aid microbial research and industrial processes.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, period-based classification and comparison of image segmentation techniques for microorganism biovolume measurement, offering valuable insights for researchers.

Findings

Digital image processing enhances microbial analysis accuracy.

Segmentation methods have evolved significantly since the 1980s.

The survey identifies key trends and future directions in the field.

Abstract

With the acceleration of urbanization and living standards, microorganisms play increasingly important roles in industrial production, bio-technique, and food safety testing. Microorganism biovolume measurements are one of the essential parts of microbial analysis. However, traditional manual measurement methods are time-consuming and challenging to measure the characteristics precisely. With the development of digital image processing techniques, the characteristics of the microbial population can be detected and quantified. The changing trend can be adjusted in time and provided a basis for the improvement. The applications of the microorganism biovolume measurement method have developed since the 1980s. More than 62 articles are reviewed in this study, and the articles are grouped by digital image segmentation methods with periods. This study has high research significance and application value, which can be referred to microbial researchers to have a comprehensive understanding of microorganism biovolume measurements using digital image analysis methods and potential applications.