The Daily Mail of 11 June 2023 reports that an AI application that can scan sperm to work out which are healthiest, has been developed.
Even in men who eat well and exercise regularly, barely one in ten sperm are healthy — and in some men the ratio falls below four percent. Scientists have however developed a ‘sperm health test’ algorithm that scans swimmers for their shape and how they move to pick out the best ones for fertilizing an egg from the crowd.
They hope that it will boost success rates with invitro fertilization (IVF) and lower costs, meaning couples will need fewer rounds of the treatment.
Semen samples were submitted by fertility clinics across the US and other countries, and were mostly from men in their 30s and 40s — although they ranged up to the age of 75 years.
To develop the algorithm, the scientists placed the sperm samples under a microscope and analyzed the health of each sperm.
The sperm were graded based on their shape and how well they swim and a ten second video of each swimming.
This was then fed into the AI to give it the ability to accurately estimate how healthy any one particular sperm is.