The incidence of renal calculi is a serious global health concern, and accurate diagnostic procedures play a key role in treating this disease. The current study proposes a dual-stage framework to automate the classification and accurate segmentation of kidney stones utilizing a computed tomography scan image. In the first part, a CNN model using a transfer-learning ResNet-50 architecture was formulated to classify renal stone images into normal, fragmentable (F-type), and non-fragmentable (NF-type) types. The proposed CNN architecture was trained to yield a high diagnostic accuracy, with the final network achieving 99.39% accuracy. In the second stage, the image segmentation is performed using the following three methods: maximally stable extremal regions (MSER), Region Growing, and a proposed new Hybrid image segmentation technique. The hybrid proposed image segmentation technique leverages a key strategy that combines region growing and MSER segmentation to extract the periphery of the kidney stone and yield accurate morphological descriptors. The results indicate that the three methods used in this research are anatomically consistent. Also, the segmentation of pre-filtered images minimizes errors and demonstrates efficacy and feasibility to optimize ESWL procedures to increase efficiency through accurate kidney stone analysis.
M. N. Hossain, E. Bhuiyan, M. B. A. Miah, T. A. Sifat, Z. Muhammad, and M. F. Al Masud, “Detection and classification of kidney disease from CT images: An automated deep learning approach,” Technologies, vol. 13, no. 11, p. 508, 2025.
B. Oliveira, B. Teixeira, M. Magalhães, N. Vinagre, A. Fraga, and V. Cavadas, “Extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy: Retrospective study on possible predictors of treatment success and revisiting the role of non-contrast-enhanced computer tomography in kidney and ureteral stone disease,” Urolithiasis, 2024.
L. Maier-Hein et al., “Metrics reloaded: Recommendations for image analysis validation,” Nature Methods, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 195–212, 2024.
A. A. Taha and A. Hanbury, “Metrics for evaluating 3D medical image segmentation: Analysis, selection, and tool,” BMC Medical Imaging, vol. 15, no. 1, p. 29, 2015.
M. Islam and M. H. K. Mehedi, “CT kidney dataset: Normal-cyst-tumor and stone,” Kaggle, vol. 2, 2021.
Z. Chen et al., “Comprehensive 3D analysis of the renal system and stones: Segmenting and registering non-contrast and contrast computed tomography images,” Information Systems Frontiers, 2025.
S. N. Almuayqil, S. Abd El-Ghany, A. A. Abd El-Aziz, and M. Elmogy, “KidneyNet: A novel CNN-based technique for the automated diagnosis of chronic kidney diseases from CT scans,” Electronics, vol. 13, no. 24, p. 4981, 2024.
D. P. Kingma and J. Ba, “Adam: A method for stochastic optimization,” arXiv preprint arXiv:1412.6980, 2014.
S. Asif, X. Zheng, and Y. Zhu, “An optimized fusion of deep learning models for kidney stone detection from CT images,” Journal of King Saud University - Information Sciences, vol. 36, no. 7, p. 102130, 2024.
S. S. G. Sahu and R. Kumar, “Automated morphometric analysis and localization of renal calculi using advanced image processing,” International Journal of Biomedical Imaging, vol. 2024, 2024.
D. S. N. Vasudeva and V. S. Dhaka, “Enhancing kidney stone diagnosis with AI-driven radiographic imaging: A review,” Discover Artificial Intelligence, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 200, 2024, doi: 10.1007/s44163-024-00125-x.
K. R. Chandra, T. H. Manoj, V. Harshitha, S. Divya, P. Swarnalatha, and S. Kareem, “Enhancing kidney stone diagnosis: A fusion approach of FCM and CNN for precise detection,” in Proc. 3rd Int. Conf. Distributed Computing, Electrical Circuits and Electronics, 2024.
K. He, X. Zhang, S. Ren, and J. Sun, “Deep residual learning for image recognition,” in Proc. IEEE Conf. Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), 2016.
E. P. S. Win, “Nephrolithiasis detection and classification based on supervised machine learning,” Journal of Data Science and Intelligent Systems, 2025.
M. Zavvar and H. Ebrahimnezhad, “Accurate detection of kidney stones using attention-based graph models,” Engineering Research Express, 2026.
D. A. Mahmood and M. A. Muhammadali, “Hybrid U-Net architectures with ResNet50 and VGG19 for accurate CT-based kidney disease and stone segmentation,” UHD Journal of Science and Technology, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 231–250, 2025.
D. C. Elton, E. B. Turkbey, P. J. Pickhardt, and R. M. Summers, “A deep learning system for automated kidney stone detection and volumetric segmentation on noncontrast CT scans,” Medical Physics, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 2545–2554, 2022.
H. A. Owida, J. Al-Nabulsi, N. Al Hawamdeh, S. Abuowaida, Z. Salah, and E. A. Elsoud, “Deep learning-based kidney disease classification using ResNet50: Enhancing diagnostic accuracy,” in Proc. 2nd Jordanian Int. Biomedical Engineering Conf., 2024.
N. Vasudeva, V. S. Dhaka, and D. Sinwar, “Enhancing kidney stone diagnosis with AI-driven radiographic imaging: A review,” Discover Artificial Intelligence, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 200, 2025.
K. Yildirim, P. G. Bozdag, M. Talo, O. Yildirim, M. Karabatak, and U. R. Acharya, “Deep learning model for automated kidney stone detection using coronal CT images,” Computers in Biology and Medicine, vol. 135, p. 104569, 2021.
S. Sudharson and P. Kokil, “An ensemble of deep neural networks for kidney stone classification from CT images,” Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, vol. 70, 2022, doi: 10.1016/j.bspc.2021.103018.
Z. Zhang and U. Bagci, “Segmentation quality and volumetric accuracy in medical imaging,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.1774, 2024.