J Clin Pathol Qual Control.  1997 Dec;19(2):361-366.

Development of a Drawing Program to Manufacture a Circular Template for Measurement of Inhibition Zone Size in Disk Diffusion Tests

• Uh Y
• Kim KS
• Jang IH
• Yoon KJ
• Song W

Abstract

BACKGROUND: With disk diffusion testing, measurement of inhibition zone diameters, by use of a sliding caliper or ruler, is too laborious and time-consuming. So, we developed a drawing program to manufacture a circular template for the accurate and rapid measurement of inhibition zone size in disk diffusion tests.
METHODS
This program were developed by Visual Basic (Microsoft Co., USA) software. Template size, and number and position of disk were designed to set by 8 hole disk dispenser (Becton Dickinson). Each circle as drawn after inputting data of zone diameter in accordance with susceptible and resistant interpretative criteria according to organisms and antimicrobial disks tested, and finally, a template with two circles representing resistant and susceptible zone was drawn. Guiding rulers were located on each templates for exact measurement of the inhibition zone diameter.
RESULTS
Reading time of inhibition zone by the template method was approximately half the time of the ruler method.
CONCLUSIONS
We concluded that this program was a rapid and accurate method for measuring the zones of inhibition in disk diffusion tests.

MeSH Terms

Diffusion*