Towards characterization of bacterial colonies and biofilms: An approach based on swept source optical coherence tomography

The continuous development of microorganism colonies may lead to the development of biofilms. The ability to observe bacterial layers in real time using Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) can be beneficial for cross-sectional growth studies of bacterial biofilms. A new mathematical model has been developed and utilized to calculate the backscattering optical properties of sample and estimate the necessary parameters. The spectroscopic based analytical method has been successfully demonstrated for characterization of different bacterial colonies and biofilms. The results were verified with conventional ‘Gram staining’ method. The proposed analytical method has potential to monitor realtime growth kinetics of bacteria. The quantities observed were cross-sectional growth and scattering using optical properties for the different bacterial layers.