Automatic hemolysis identification on aligned dual-lighting images of cultured blood agar plates.

•Hemolysis detection on bacterial culture images is a highly relevant and difficult task in microbiology.•Novel feature-based solution for fine alignment of dual-light images of blood agar cultures.•First solution for automatic hemolysis detection, based on RBF-SVM image feature classification.•Python code, interactive notebooks and large and fully annotated quality image dataset provided.•Significant results for the emerging fields of Digital Microbiology Imaging and Lab Automation.