The aim of the work is to show the different types of microscopic techniques used in our laboratory for the examination of the urinary sediment. Bright field microscopy is still used today for the analysis of the urinary sediment, but with this type of microscopy the elements of the sediment are poorly differentiated from the background of the slide, especially the elements with a low refractive index (hyaline casts, red blood cells with low hemoglobin content). Phase contrast microscopy is based on the use of a special condenser and a special objective. The con-denser has an annular diaphragm which transforms the incident light into a hollow cone of light. The objective contains in its posterior focal plane a circular ring, the so-called phase ring which is covered with a translucent layer of silver. Polarized light microscopy requires a microscope equipped with two polarization filters: the polarizer and the analyzer. Based on our experience as well as on the references data we can say that for a certain identification of the urinary sediment elements it is necessary to us the parallelism of the microscopic techniques.