Totally agree with you mate that the future is automation.. But I disagree that we will be reporting positive culture results on patients any time soon using colony morphology alone.
Colony morphology is soooo variable within a given bacterial species and even for a given morphological variant would be dependant on a multitude of other environmental, physiological and gene expression factors. MALD--TOF is vastly more specific, it's a protein/amino acid fingerprint much like molecular methods such as PCR take advantage of a DNA fingerprint.
Until morphology based imaging methods show the same SPECIFICITY as the current gold standards they won't be adopted by labs or approved by regulatory authorities for the confirmation of bacterial ID.
Appreciate the intelligent replies by the way mate, a breath of fresh air
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