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The determination of accurate material composition of a kidney stone is crucial for understanding the formation of
the kidney stone as well as for preventive therapeutic strategies. Radiations probing instrumental activation analysis
techniques are excellent tools for identification of involved materials present in the kidney stone. In particular, x-ray
fluorescence (XRF) can be very useful for the determination of minor and trace materials in the kidney stone. The
X-ray fluorescence measurements were performed at the Radiation Measurements and Spectroscopy Laboratory
(RMSL) of department of nuclear engineering of Missouri University of Science and Technology and different kidney
stones were acquired from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. Presently, experimental studies in conjunction
with analytical techniques were used to determine the exact composition of the kidney stone. A new type of
experimental set-up was developed and utilized for XRF analysis of the kidney stone. The correlation of applied
radiation source intensity, emission of X-ray spectrum from involving elements and absorption coefficient
characteristics were analyzed. To verify the experimental results with analytical calculation, several sets of kidney
stones were analyzed using XRF technique. The elements which were identified from this techniques are Silver
(Ag), Arsenic (As), Bromine (Br), Chromium (Cr), Copper (Cu), Gallium (Ga), Germanium (Ge), Molybdenum
(Mo), Niobium (Nb), Rubidium (Rb), Selenium (Se), Strontium (Sr), Yttrium (Y), Zirconium (Zr). This paper
presents a new approach for exact detection of accurate material composition of kidney stone materials using XRF
instrumental activation analysis technique.
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