The ACVT has been working with LBT Innovations, a South Australian medical device company, for more than 5 years on a new form of medical device to automate the reading of Agar plates.  The processing of Agar plates is an important and time-consuming part of the normal operation of hospitals and clinics around the world.  Most plates do not show any interesting growth, but need to be inspected by a trained pathologist to see that this is the case.

The device developed by LBT and ACVT loads a plate and takes a series of images of it.  These images are then analysed through Machine Learning algorithms to identify the growth present.

The ACVT and LBT have developed the technology together, from inception to FDA approval and now on to delivery.  This is a first in category device, which means that the FDA had established a new category for the approval because there was no other device like it.