Quantitative Image Analysis: a monitoring tool in wastewater treatment

Abstract

[Excerpt] Computers are key equipment for the analysis of large amounts of data, for tasks requiring complex computation, and for the extraction of quantitative information, opposite to the qualitative evaluation of human analysis. Today, the automatic analysis of numerical images captured by digital cameras enables to rapidly extract quantitative information. Thus, quantitative image analysis (QIA) can be defined in general terms as the extraction of significant information from images, by means of digital image processing and analysis techniques. In the last twenty years, QIA have gained an unquestionable role in several fields of research worldwide and our lab is considered a pioneer research unit on the development of QIA procedures for biological wastewater treatment processes monitoring. Over the years, the number of QIA studies [1, 2] for aggregated (granules and flocs) biomass and filamentous bacteria characterization has been increasing. It should be noticed, though, that some difficulties may be encountered in QIA procedures related to the suitability of the employed microscopy technique, regarding the intended biological process characterization. [...]