Raman spectroscopy as a non-destructive tool to determine the chemical composition of urinary sediments

Urolithiasis is a common disease worldwide, but its causes are still not well understood. In many cases, crystalluria provides an early indication of urinary stone formation, and characterisation of the urinary deposits could help doctors to take early preventative measures to stop their further growth. Nowadays, the gold standard for the analysis of urinary deposits is optical microscopy, but the morphology-based information it provides can often be unreliable and incomplete, particularly for deposits with no defined crystalline structure. In response to the need of a more attested method, we used Raman spectroscopy to determine the chemical composition of urinary deposits and urinary stones of 15 patients with urolithiasis in order to find out whether direct correlation between the composition of the corresponding stones and the deposits exists. We found that the main chemical compounds typically constituting urinary stones also form the deposits and that their composition correlates in eleven out of fifteen cases. However, brushite deposits that we found in two cases did not result in brushite, but mixed calcium oxalate monohydrate and phosphate stones. Overall, Raman spectroscopy is an informative and reliable method that can be used for analysis of urinary sediments for early diagnosis of urinary stone formation.