Let's be blunt. Potentially toxic waste is just about the last thing you want to get in the mail. And that's just one of the opportunities for AI to make the business of analyzing wastewater better.
It's an industry that goes far beyond just making sure water coming from traditional sewage plants is clean.
Just about every industry on earth - from computer chips to potato chips - relies on putting water to work, which means we're all, literally, swimming in the stuff.
Just What the Doctor Ordered It's also an industry that depends on moving samples through the mail to be analyzed by human experts.
That started to change, however, thanks to a conversation Opseyes founder Bryan Arndt, then a managing consultant with Denmark-based architecture and engineering firm Ramboll, had with his brother, a radiologist.
Arndt was intrigued when his brother described how deep learning was being set loose on medical images.
Arndt quickly realized that the same technology - deep learning - that helps radiologists analyze images of the human body faster and more accurately could almost instantly analyze images, taken through microscopes, of wastewater samples.
Faster Flow The result, developed by Arndt and his colleagues at Ramboll, a wastewater industry leader for more than 50 years, dramatically speeds up an industry that's long relied on sending tightly sealed samples of some of the stinkiest stuff on earth through the mail.
That's critical when cities and towns and industries of all kinds are constantly taking water from lakes and rivers, like the Mississippi, treating it, and returning it to nature.
We had one client find out their discharge was a quarter-mile, at best, from the intake for the next city's water supply, Arndt says. Someone is always drinking what your tube is putting out.
That makes wastewater enormously important.
Water, Water, Everywhere It's an industry that was kicked off by the 1972 U.S. Clean Water Act, a landmark not just in the United States, but globally.
Thanks to growing awareness of the importance of clean water, analysts estimate the global wastewater treatment market will be worth more than $210 billion by 2025.
The challenge: while almost every industry creates wastewater, wastewater expertise isn't exactly ubiquitous.
Experts who can peer through a microscope and identify, say, the six most common bacterial filaments as they're known in the industry, or critters such as tardigrades, are scarce.
You've Got Ugh That means samples of wastewater, or soil containing that water, have to be sent through the mail to get to these experts, who often have a backlog of samples to go through.
While Ardnt says people in his industry take precautions to seal potentially toxic waste and track it to ensure it gets to the right place, it's still time-consuming.
The solution, Arndt realized, was to use deep learning to train an AI that could yield instantaneous results. To do this, last year Arndt reached out on social media to colleagues throughout the wastewater industry to send him samples.
Least Sexy Photoshoot Ever He and his small team then spent months creating more than 6,000 images of these samples in Ramboll's U.S. labs, where they build elaborate models of wastewater systems before deploying full-scale systems for clients. Think of it as the least sexy photoshoot, ever.
These images were then labeled and used by a data science team lead by Robin Schlenga to train a convolutional neural network accelerated by NVIDIA GPUs. Launched last September after a year-and-a-half of development, Opseyes allows customers to use their smartphone to take a picture of a sample through a microscope and get answers within minutes.
It's just another example of how expertise in companies seemingly far outside of tech can be transformed into an AI. After all, no one wants to have to wait a week to know if it's safe to take a sip of water, Arndt says.
Bottoms up.
Featured image credit: Opseyes
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
23/07/2026
Download Now!
To receive a short case study showcasing Vivid Broadcast's audio setup, please enter the following details:
--
First Name* First Name ...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Witbe brings its AI-native testing and monitoring infrastructure to Amsterdam: demonstrations on real devices, a peer-reviewed technical paper in the conference...
23/07/2026
Quickplay, Caretta Research, Evergent, and Yospace have announced that the renowned IBC Pride Happy Hour will once again bring the vibe and fun back to IBC on F...
23/07/2026
At IBC2026, Interra Systems will present this year's focus: operational AI at scale for QC, monitoring, and captioning workflows. The industry has moved pas...
23/07/2026
Illusionfx is finally coming!
Alex Perea July 23, 2026
0 Comments
The new website is now live to mark the occasion.
Since the last update, feedback h...
23/07/2026
Evergent (5.A86) will showcase its Agentic Revenue Orchestration Platform for streaming services, sports leagues, pay-TV operators at IBC2026 (RAI Amsterdam, 11...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
David Dvir, 2D founder (left), Sundeep Reddy (center), and Jean-Marc Bouchut (right), both of Zeiss...
23/07/2026
Screen Australia announces new national documentary accelerator program 23 July 2026
Screen Australia has today announced the Above the Line Documentary Accel...
23/07/2026
RT Commercial has today announced Centra as the official food partner once again of The Traitors Ireland, coming to RT One and RT Player later this year.
Ce...
23/07/2026
RT Commercial today announced Honda as sponsor of Today with David McCullagh RT Radio 1, weekdays 9am 11am.
Broadcasting directly after Morning Ireland in ...
23/07/2026
RT News is pleased to announce Barry Gallagher has been assigned as the new journalist covering news from Cork, Kerry and the wider Southern region
Working al...
23/07/2026
Lock in and load up the cloud. GFN Thursday brings fresh updates and new adventu...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
Let's be blunt. Potentially toxic waste is just about the last thing you want to get in the mail. And that's just one of the opportunities for AI to make the business of analyzing wastewater better.
