Synbiosis, a world-leading manufacturer of automated microbiological systems, have introduced AutoZONE, an automatic zone analyser, which produces accurate plate readings in seconds, saving antibiotic and vaccine manufacturers both time and money.

AutoZONE consists of a computer controlled, high-resolution CCD camera on an automated gantry system. The camera automatically moves from zone to zone, rapidly reading and recording zone diameters with a +/- 0.01mm degree of accuracy. The system increases throughput as it can analyse a 64 zone bioassay plate (including the diameter calculation and image archiving), in just 70 seconds, around 25 times faster than manual analysis. Additionally, the average diameter measurement is based on the entire zone area, making the results more precise than those taken from manual single or double diameter measurements.

Since users can create and recall automatic scanning patterns for different plate configurations, AutoZONE is ideal for applications including multi-zone bioassay plate analysis (commonly 36 and 64 zone plates), and Single Radial Immunodiffusion assay plate reads. The zone reading results and zone images are automatically recorded by GLP compliant software, thus eliminating any keying or scanning errors that can occur during data transfer. This information is instantly saved to hard disk for secure archiving or to generate professional reports for audit by regulatory agencies.