The ePetri Dish
December 6, 2011 | Terry Sharrer
The Petri dish has been almost as important to microbiology as the microscope, since Julius Richard Petri created it in Robert Koch’s lab in 1879. The latest version of this classic tool is an electronic device, developed at CalTech, relies on the image sensor chip of a smart phone. The phone’s LED screen provides light for scanning, while the phone and dish are incubated. A laptop receives the phone’s images of a growing culture and measures the expansion rate in real time. MORE