Improvement of Urinary Stones Analysis Combining Morphological Analysis and Infrared Spectroscopy

Abstract

Daudon et al. have developed a complex morphoconstitutional classification of renal stone in six different morphological types and several subtypes. According to this classification, a precise correspondence exists between causes of renal stones and subtypes with a great clinical relevance and can be considering a sort of shortcut for the metabolic diagnosis in renal stone patients. Now the diagnosis of causes of renal stones generally requires repeated biochemical investigations on urine and blood samples and usually remains presumptive. We analyzed 150 urinary stones both by stereoscopic microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. e comparison of 150 stones did not reveal any disagreement. We have only 20 partial agreement, and clinicians agreed that the imprecise information obtained with morphological analysis alone would have missed an important clinical finding only in 3 cases. In conclusion, in our opinion, the analysis of urinary stone must combine two different analytical techniques: morphological analysis by stereomicroscope and biochemical analysis with the FT-IR.

Whitlockite structures in kidney stones indicate infectious origin: a scanning electron microscopy and Synchrotron Radiation investigation

“…At this point, it is worth bearing in mind that Wk has been reported in different parts of the body including lungs [82], breast [83], gallstone [84], prostate [85,86], aorta [87], bone [88], cartilage [89] and salivary glands [90], and to note that emerging evidence indicates that bacteria are present in and contribute to other calcifications such as vascular calcification [91]. Wk has also been identified as a kidney stone component [92][93][94]. While several publications concentrate on kidney stones containing struvite, little is known regarding the relationship between infection and kidney stones containing Wk.…”

Scanning electron microscopy—a powerful imaging technique for the clinician

“…Recently, we have investigated a set of kidney stones containing whitlockite in order to assess the relationship between this chemical compound and infection. Whitlockite is a calcium phosphate phase of crucial interest in several pathologies [157][158][159][160][161]. In order to confirm its presence in kidney stones, we have performed EDX measurements.…”

Structural and chemical heterogeneities of primary hyperoxaluria kidney stones from pediatric patients

“…Identification of stone composition by IR spectroscopy was performed by automated software, which compares the measured spectrum to a database of spectra of known materials and provides a ranking based on a similarity metric [21], and was then refined by manual analysis of the spectra. In Fig.…”