Application of robotics and image processing to automated colony picking and arraying.

We describe a system that applies image processing and robotic techniques to automatically pick individual colonies from square petri dishes and array them in 96-well microtiter plates. Digital images of the colony distribution in the dishes are acquired using a video camera and frame buffer. Commercial image processing software is used to identify individual colonies and determine their locations. A Hewlett-Packard Microassay System robot reads the resulting coordinate file for each dish, picks cells from each identified colony and transfers the cells into a microtiter plate well. A disposable pipet tip is used as the sterile implement for colony picking. Custom holders position the dishes accurately and provide common coordinate systems for imaging and picking. The system is calibrated to account for the depth of agar in the dishes. The robot can process up to 10 dishes and 20 plates (1920 colonies) in a single run. It has successfully arrayed a cosmid library of the S. pombe genome consisting of approximately 6000 colonies in 30 petri dishes in about 40 hours of robot time. Future enhancements to the system are discussed.