What is EmbryoScope™?
Here at Next Fertility Nordic, embryos are cultivated in a time-lapse incubator named the EmbryoScope™. Culturing embryos in the EmbryoScope™ ensures they remain undisturbed. The time-lapse video cinematography allows for the detections of abnormalities in development. The technology has a built-in model for embryo evaluation developed from Artificial Intelligence which helps to select the best embryos for transfer and cryopreservation.
What is an EmbryoScope™?
It is an incubator with a built-in camera and microscope that takes images of embryos every 10 minutes. This creates a time-lapse video of the journey from an unfertilized egg on Day 0 to an expanded or hatching blastocyst on Day 5 or 6.
The individual photos/videos can be examined and edited side-by-side using advanced EmbryoViewer software. Embryos are cultured in individual wells in a special EmbryoSlide dish that contains a barcode label to ensure patient traceability.
How does this differ from traditional incubation?
In regular incubation, embryos are often removed from an incubator and inspected under a microscope. Each time an observation is made, embryos are exposed to suboptimal conditions. These traditional ‘snap-shot’ evaluations are often quick and do not allow for visualization of crucial embryo development patterns. For example, an abnormality in fertilization is missed in 70% of instances. This is critical since an abnormal number of nuclei has been shown to reduce implantation.
How can it improve IVF treatments?
VitroLife© report that use of time-lapse technology leads to a quicker time to pregnancy. Statistics have shown that time-lapse culture significantly increase implantation rates, ongoing clinical pregnancy rates and live birth rates while significantly lowering early pregnancy loss compared to traditional culture.
