Evaluation of the OSIRIS video reader as an automated measurement system for the agar disk diffusion technique

Measurement of inhibition zones by the automated OSIRIS system was compared with manual measurement. In total, 14 176 measurements were made with 352 staphylococcal and 80 Enterobacteriaceae isolates, involving four panels of antibiotics on round and square Mueller-Hinton agar plates, according to the German DIN 58940 recommendations. Variations of +/- 3 mm in zone size measurements were defined as tolerable. Very major errors (i.e., classification of a resistant isolate as susceptible by the OSIRIS system) occurred in < 1% of tests. With staphylococci, the best concordance was recorded for rifampicin (91.3%), moxifloxacin (88.1%), and gentamicin (86.3%), while the concordance on square plates for vancomycin, pristinamycin and kanamycin was 97.2%, 96.1% and 96.0%, respectively. The poorest concordance was for cefuroxime (43.7%) and novobiocin (47.0%) on round plates, and fosfomycin (36.5%) and chloramphenicol (84.0%) on square plates. With Enterobacteriaceae, 100% concordance was recorded for ampicillin, gentamicin and ciprofloxacin on round agar plates, and for gentamicin, cefoxitin and nalidixic acid on square plates. The poorest results were recorded for nalidixic acid (32.5%) and piperacillin (82.5%) on round plates, and for nitrofurantoin (72.5%) and amoxycillin (82.5%) on square plates. It was concluded that the OSIRIS system was a rapid and reliable system for measuring disk susceptibility test results on round and square agar plates.