抄録
Objective: Practitioners at small-scale medical check-up facilities lacking automatic urine analyzers visually
analyze and interpret urine test strips. However, visual judgment is liable to human errors in estimating parameters and variations in judgment time. Therefore, to objectively judge the color of urine test strips, we developed an automated urine test strip colorimetric program using images taken with a smartphone camera.
Materials and Methods: For urinalysis, 40 urine samples were randomly selected, and six nurses were included as evaluators. The effectiveness of the program was confirmed by determining the differences in visual judgment among evaluators. A color chart was used as a judgment reference table for the comparison of visual judgment of urinalysis test strips. Two automatic urine analyzers, US-3500 (Eiken Chemical Co., Ltd.) and LABOSPECT 006 (Hitachi High-Tech Co., Ltd.), were used for the comparative evaluation.
Results: The study showed slight inter-rater differences in the evaluation of most parameters, including protein, glucose, ketone, specific gravity, occult blood, leukocytes, and nitrite; however, individual differences were observed for urobilinogen, bilirubin, pH, creatinine, and albumin. Moreover, we compared visual judgment to the new program and observed that the agreement rate of the automated urine test strip colorimetric program (81.9%)
was higher than that of visual judgment (75.1%).
Conclusion: Based on our findings, we propose an inexpensive and simple method for the stable evaluation of urine test strips for urinalysis that is unaffected by human error during visual judgment.
