SCOTTISH scientists have developed a new technique that could allow doctors to diagnose kidney diseases faster and for less cost.

Physicists at the University of St Andrews discovered they could use a new super-resolution microscope to probe the organ, sparing the need to deploy a time-consuming and expensive electron microscope.

The treatment could speed up detection of nephrotic syndrome, a group of debilitating and sometimes lethal diseases which cause kidneys to lose the ability to retain proteins in the blood.

Conventional light microscopes have been used for almost two hundred years to visualise cells and diagnose disease in tissue, but the scientists' breakthrough has the potential to save lives and well as valuable resources as it heralds a new era in microscopic diagnosis.

The research was carried out in collaboration with the Department of Pathology at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, with the team developing an alternative light microscope which doubles the maximum resolution previously thought possible using this technology.

In a report published this month in the journal Biomedical Optics Express, the researchers showed for the first time that the super-resolution structured illumination microscope (SIM) can ‘see’ the critical changes in kidney cell processes which allow diagnosis of nephrotic diseases.

Professor Kishan Dholakia of the University of St Andrews said: “This is an exciting advance and I'm very pleased by the synergy of our team of physicists, biologists and physicians to apply advances in optics for the diagnosis and treatment of kidney disease.”

Dr James Pullman of the Montefiore Medical Center added: “It is important and exciting to show how advances in physics such as the SIM can benefit medicine and biology, and especially help people with kidney disease.

"I feel that our results represent the beginning of a new era in diagnostic pathology.”