Artificial intelligence is a trending topic, with discussions around it ranging from 'robots will take over our jobs' to debates on the ethical repercussions. But as artificial intelligence becomes more advanced, more and more problems are being solved and one area which is benefitting from AI technologies is in fertility treatments.
I've pioneered a new fertility treatment called CATI (Cognitive automation of time-lapse images), which is the first automated system for using artificial intelligence to recognise and sort embryos.
The system, which sort's embryos according to selected morphokinetic criteria, obtained from time-lapse systems plays an important role in IVF with aneuploidy screening (PGS) in preventing the misdiagnosis of mosaic embryos.
Essentially, this means that using the technique in conjunction with PGS boosts pregnancy success rates by 30-40%. This means that for example a woman aged 40, who has a 20% chance of pregnancy, will reach the rates of a younger woman, with 50-60% chance of success.
Preimplantation genetic screening (PGS) is a screening tool that is being used to help further improve embryo selection and is successful. However, there is a drawback with this method in that false negative/positive results can occur in mosaic embryos, leading to the rejection of viable embryos.
CATI removes this disadvantage by detecting abnormal cleavage patterns and providing valuable information on the dynamics of the embryo morphologic changes, so that only viable embryos are used. The automatic statistic analysis enables the evaluation of multiple embryo markers at the same time to remove human error and only select those that are relevant to embryo implantation ability.
It is the use of both PGS and CATI together which is aiding the goal of IVF and leading to increased success rates of a healthy live birth.
A recent study showed a significant difference in clinical pregnancy rates between 'Group A' patients that had embryos undergo time-lapse and PGS, and 'Group B' patients that had embryos cultured in time-lapse alone, (72.5% vs 52.6%, respectively). For ongoing pregnancy rates, a significant difference was also observed between the two groups (71.6% for Group A vs 50.8% for Group B).
All couples with at least one parameter of their reproductive ability affected can benefit from the combined technique of using PGS and CATI. This includes those who have experienced multiple miscarriages, repeated failure of implantation or those who have an advanced reproductive age.