Unmet Need
Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are infections in any part of the urinary system (e.g., kidney, ureter, bladder, urethra, etc.). They are the most common outpatient infections, with over 7 million patient visits per year, 50-60% of which occur in adult women [1][2]. UTIs are generally diagnosed via urinalysis which can be used to detect changes in urine chemistries or inflammation and may include urine culture to identify pathogens. Testing can be completed in a laboratory or at the point-of-care (using dipsticks). However, the sensitivity and specificity of point-of-care tests can vary, limiting the diagnostic accuracy of these tests. The current gold standard for diagnosing UTIs is through urine culture, which can be used to specifically identify the pathogen responsible for infection. However, this process can be lengthy and expensive, and only provides a single snapshot from the time of urine collection. This type of analysis also depends on the sporadic collection of urine, which has the potential to miss key events between time points. Thus, there is a need for a low-cost and real-time method of analyzing urine in order to improve the treatment and management of UTIs.
Technology Overview
Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a low-cost device that can image urine draining through a catheter using lensless digital holography, and these data can be used to identify patients with UTIs. Not only is this a non-invasive alternative to traditional urine culture, it is also continuous and real-time, which permits the analysis of temporal trends. The inventors have developed prototypes that verify this approach through the comparison of particle concentration estimates in flowing human urine with ground-truth results. This is the first technology that enables microscopic analysis of urine at the bedside, which has the potential to introduce automated analyses of excreted urine over time to the clinical workflow.
Stage of Development
Proof of Concept.
Publication
N/A
