Raman spectroscopy of urine
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Preliminary investigation of Raman spectrometry for differentiating normal from abnormal urine specimens.
IRAS ID
335352
Contact name
Brian Shine
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Veritie Group
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 10 days
Research summary
The aim of the study is to demonstrate the feasibility of a prototype diagnostic device (Raman spectrometer) that will test urine samples. It is hoped that by identifying differences between urine from healthy and diseased people the device will address a wide number of routine clinical questions and provide near instantaneous answers.
Raman spectroscopy is a spectroscopic technique typically used to determine vibrational modes of molecules. The technique is routinely used in advanced laboratories in academia, environmental testing and pharmaceuticals. However, as systems have previously been large and complex, Raman spectroscopy has not been as widely deployed as a clinical diagnostic tool, despite numerous clinical applications being published in the scientific literature.
The size of the spectrometers required has reduced to <10% of what they were 5 years ago and spectrometers are now smaller than a shoe box. Furthermore, costs and reliability have also improved. By coupling this technology with machine-learning algorithms we are now able to develop a low-cost diagnostic system, that is disorder agnostic and should be capable of addressing a wide number of routine clinical questions whilst providing near instantaneous answers.
Whilst longer-term target applications include the early detection of several cancers, we initially need to prove the concept using an easily definable disease and patient cohort.
We therefore propose to commence by differentiating between patients with and without diabetes.
The study will use residual urine from samples that had been obtained for clinical investigations, prior to the routine discarding process. They will be anonymized recording only age, sex and diabetes/no diabetes.
This group will be used to create the model, which will then be tested using a second group of mixed diabetes/no diabetes samples, obtained in the same way but with this information only being revealed to the researcher once the samples have been run.REC name
London - Hampstead Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
24/PR/0019
Date of REC Opinion
31 Jan 2024
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion