Dual energy micro CT SkyScan 1173 for the characterization of urinary stone
Knowledge of the composition of urinary stones is an essential part to determine suitable treatments for patients. The aim of this research is to characterize the urinary stones by using dual energy micro CT SkyScan 11173. This technique combines high energy and low energy scanning during a single acquisition. Six human urinary stones were scanned in vitro using 80 kV and 120 kV micro CT SkyScan 1173. Projected images were produced by micro CT SkyScan 1173 and then reconstructed using NRecon (in house software from SkyScan) to obtain a complete 3D image. The urinary stone images were analysed using CT analyser to obtain information of internal structure and Hounsfield Unit (HU) values to determine the information regarding the composition of the urinary stones, respectively. HU values obtained from some regions of interest in the same slice are compared to a reference HU. The analysis shows information of the composition of the six scanned stones obtained. The six stones consist of stone number 1 (calcium+cystine) number 2 (calcium+struvite) number 3 (calcium+cystine+struvite) number 4 (calcium) number 5 (calcium+cystine+struvite) and number 6 (calcium+uric acid) This shows that dual energy micro CT SkyScan 1173 was able to characterize the composition of the urinary stone.