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Time Lapse Embryo Imaging for a continuous embryo assessment

February 19, 2015 by Dr. Demián Glujovsky
timelapse-embryo.jpg

Time Lapse Embryo Imaging for a continuous embryo assessment

When I saw this video for the first time, I was really surprised. It’s amazing what we can now observe and record with a microscope and a camera. Time Lapse Embryo Imaging  is a technology by which we can observe continuously the development of the embryos in incubators. Then, we watch the movie in fast motion to see what happened over 3 or 5 days, but just in a couple of minutes.

What would be the potential benefits?

  1. The advantage may lie with the undisturbed nature of the culture conditions, whereby images can be obtained with our removing the embryos from the incubator environment for conventional bench-top light microscopy. This minimize the exposure of the embryos to both human handling and changes in the air temperature and gas composition.
  2. The potential advantage of accumulate detailed time-lapse images of embryo development at regular time intervals. This includes the timing of cell divisions, intervals between cell cycles, presence of multi nucleation and fragmentation, and some other details that could be missed by using standard morphological assessment.

However…

…when thinking about the real benefits for patients, it is unclear whether this technology brings something good or not. If it should be used as a routine procedure or just in specific cases. Or if it should not be used at all. If point 1) was beneficial, it could increase the success rate of the treatments, which would make this a clinically important intervention. If point 2) brings any benefit, success rates per cycle should not change because it would only serve to select the best embryos before transfer (which would reduce the time to pregnancy but should not increase the percentage of pregnancies) ; this is not worthless, but it should be evaluated in the context of the additional cost.

In conclusion, Time Lapse Embryo systems are potentially an intervention that could be useful. Like all others, it must still go through the evaluation of methodologically well-designed studies that allow to retrieve valid and repeatable conclusions. For now, they are in the plane of the experimental.

Contact Us

Dr. Demián Glujovsky in CEGYR Buenos Aires
Viamonte 1432 - Buenos Aires Argentina
info@fertilityargentina.com

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