A portable device for probiotic counting and viability assessment based on microfluidic chip and image recognition

Area of Science:

• Microbiology
• Biotechnology
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Probiotics are crucial for gut health, necessitating accurate viable cell quantification.
• Traditional methods for probiotic enumeration are slow and labor-intensive.
• Real-time monitoring of probiotic viability is needed for product quality control.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a rapid, portable, and cost-effective system for quantifying viable probiotics.
• To enable on-site detection and enumeration of live and dead probiotics.
• To validate the system's accuracy and specificity against standard methods.

Main Methods:

• A microfluidic chip integrated with a fluorescent biosensor and image recognition.
• Rapid on-site quantification of viable probiotics in 3 minutes.
• Comparison with flow cytometry and plate counting for validation.

Main Results:

• The system achieved rapid (3-minute) and accurate quantification of viable probiotics.
• Results showed no significant difference compared to standard flow cytometry and plate counting.
• High specificity was demonstrated in distinguishing live from dead probiotics across a wide concentration range (10^7–10^11 CFU mL⁻¹).

Conclusions:

• The developed portable system offers a rapid, cost-effective solution for on-site probiotic quantification.
• This technology meets practical detection requirements for various probiotic products.
• The system has significant commercial potential for applications requiring immediate results and efficient decision-making.