BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) has announced the U.S. launch of a Urine Culture Application for use with the BD Kiestra™ lab automation incubation and imaging system that can transform the way microbiology labs approach urine culture analysis.

Designed using artificial intelligence (AI) and leveraging the quality of BD BBL™ plated media, the application uses digital imaging and software algorithms to determine the amount of growth on a urine culture plate from clean caught and catheterized samples.

The BD Kiestra™ system's intelligent incubation and imaging device uses high-throughput robotics to perform time series imaging, coupled with machine learning so that plates with no significant growth can be released for disposal and plates with significant growth automatically go into a queue for clinician analysis.

Powered by BD Synapsys™ informatics solution, the BD Kiestra™ Urine Culture application (UCA) may help improve lab efficiency and enhance quality by providing diagnostically relevant, standardized images for interpretation by laboratory staff. The new Urine Culture app can be used with both standalone BD Kiestra™ ReadA systems as well as track-based BD Kiestra™ laboratory automation solutions.