Agglutination judgment method

An agglutination judgment method of judging a type of a pattern using an apparatus, comprising:

• obtaining an image of the pattern by a camera, the pattern being formed by particles in a liquid contained in a vessel, parts of the particles being gathered on a center region of a bottom of the vessel to form a first sub-pattern on the center region, remainders of the particles being distributed on a peripheral region of the bottom surrounding the center region to form second sub-patterns on the peripheral region, the peripheral region being divided from the center region by a boundary, each of the second sub-patterns having a smaller size than that of the first sub-pattern, and the apparatus comprising the camera, an image-processing circuit and a data-processing circuit;
• processing the image by the image-processing circuit to obtain a distribution of transmitted light intensity for only the peripheral region on which the second sub-patterns are formed;
• calculating a standard deviation for the distribution by the image-processing circuit;
• and
• comparing the standard deviation with a predetermined reference value by the data-processing circuit;
• wherein
• the first sub-pattern is formed with aggregate constituted by two or more of the particles and each of the second sub-patterns is constituted by two or more of the particles in the agglutination pattern;
• the first sub-pattern is formed with individual particles and each of the second sub-patterns is constituted by one of the particles in the non-agglutination pattern;
• and
• the first sub-pattern is formed with individual particles and each of the second sub-patterns is constituted by two or more of the particles in the partial agglutination pattern.