Hi Dotterell, The BD poster is from 2015, in 2016 the trademark...

Hi Dotterell,

The BD poster is from 2015, in 2016 the trademark and patent applications were lodged and in 2017 the company announced it intention to sell the imaging software/algorithms. As LBT/CCS have forged the FDA de novo approval pathway for this new breed of interpretive software I imagine it's just a matter of BD proving their version is safe, by submission of validation studies.

Have a read through the BD patent application descriptions and you will see the product they are trying to patent is very much about analysis of colony morphology and automated negative reporting. Exactly the same as APAS... Even have a read through the APAS patent descriptions and note the similarities! Note the fact both are just applications of artificial neural networking to the processing of microbiology images.

While LBT were some of the first to start commercialising the field of artificial neural networks in the processing microbiology images they are not the only ones...it's a massive area of research and development, many groups and companies are working on it.