Investigation of critical inter-related factors affecting the efficacy of pulsed light for inactivating clinically...

To investigate critical electrical and biological factors governing the efficacy of pulsed light (PL) for the in vitro inactivation of bacteria isolated from the clinical environment. Development of this alternative PL decontamination approach is timely, as the incidence of health care-related infections remains unacceptably high.

Predetermined cell numbers of clinically relevant Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria were inoculated separately on agar plates and were flashed with

Critical inter-related factors affecting the effective and repeatable in vitro decontamination performance of PL were identified during this study that will aid further development of this athermal process technology for applications in health care and in industry. Very rapid reductions (c. 7 log(10) CFU cm(-2) within

Findings and conclusions derived from this study will enable further development and optimization of this decontamination technique in health care and in food preparation settings, and will advance the field of nonthermal processing technologies.