# Deep neural networks approach to microbial colony detection -- a comparative analysis

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.10103 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10103/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 20 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Aug 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [EfficientNet: Rethinking Model Scaling for Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.11946/) (2019)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [Gaussian Error Linear Units (GELUs)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.08415/) (2016)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [MMDetection: Open MMLab Detection Toolbox and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07155/) (2019)
- [Cascade R-CNN: Delving into High Quality Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.00726/) (2017)
- [EfficientDet: Scalable and Efficient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.09070/) (2019)
- [Transformers in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01169/) (2021)
- [XCiT: Cross-Covariance Image Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09681/) (2021)
- [Libra R-CNN: Towards Balanced Learning for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02701/) (2019)
- [CBNet: A Composite Backbone Network Architecture for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.00420/) (2021)
- [AGAR a microbial colony dataset for deep learning detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.01234/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Self-Normalized Density Map (SNDM) for Counting Microbiological Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09474/) (2022)
- [Investigation of cardinality classification for bacterial colony counting using explainable artificial intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.20026/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Counting microbial colonies is a fundamental task in microbiology and has many applications in numerous industry branches. Despite this, current studies towards automatic microbial counting using artificial intelligence are hardly comparable due to the lack of unified methodology and the availability of large datasets. The recently introduced AGAR dataset is the answer to the second need, but the research carried out is still not exhaustive. To tackle this problem, we compared the performance of three well-known deep learning approaches for object detection on the AGAR dataset, namely two-stage, one-stage and transformer based neural networks. The achieved results may serve as a benchmark for future experiments.