If you’re having trouble becoming pregnant, in vitro fertilisation (IVF) may be right for you. IVF is used to treat a range of fertility problems. An IVF cycle involves several different steps that will help you increase the chances of becoming pregnant. One of the steps is growing the embryos in a safe undisturbed environment and selecting the embryo most likely to result in the birth of a healthy baby. 

Monitoring your embryos while they grow 

After egg collection and successful fertilisation of your eggs you may have more than one embryo available. Those eggs that have been successfully fertilised (now called embryos) will be grown in the laboratory incubator for 2 to 5 days. Your embryologist will monitor their development and the best embryo will then be chosen for transfer. 

Let your embryos grow in an undisturbed environment

The embryo transfer may take place after two to three days, when the embryo(s) have reached what is called the ‘cleavage stage’, or when it has reached the blastocyst stage, usually 5-6 days after fertilisation. Not all embryos are capable of leading to a pregnancy. Embryos vary in quality and the better the quality, the more likely an embryo is to implant in the womb and lead to a pregnancy.

The traditional way

Currently, embryologists must remove the embryo from the incubator to perform three to five brief evaluations of the developing embryo, at fixed time-points over 2 to 5 days, in order to check different criteria for selecting the best embryo, such as the number of cells and how fast they are dividing.

The evaluation time allowed for these ‘snap-shot’ evaluations is limited by the need to minimise the time embryos spend outside of the safe environment of the incubator. This is to avoid embryo stress which can reduce the quality of the embryo and therefore the chances of pregnancy.

The specially designed EmbryoScope incubator with a built in camera and microscope takes an image of your embryos every 10 minutes. As a result, time-lapse videos of individual embryos are generated over the 2 to 5 days they remain in the incubator. Your embryologist uses advanced software to look at the time-lapse movies of your embryos to select the best ones for transfer and freezing.

Keeping your embryos safe

With time-lapse your embryos remain protected in the EmbryoScope incubator and stay undisturbed in their stable and warm environment for the entire culture duration.

Selecting the embryo with the highest chance

Observing features of early embryo development is important for when IVF professionals evaluate the embryo’s potential to implant and become a successful pregnancy. The traditional ‘snap-shot’ evaluations have been reported to miss critical embryo development patterns, but with EmbryoScope your embryologist does not miss a thing.

Traditional ’snap-shot’ evaluations miss critical development patterns

Traditional evaluation is likely to miss abnormal cleavage patterns. One abnormal cleavage pattern is direct cleavage which has been shown to occur in up to 26% of embryos and to reduce chances of implantation after transfer.1,2 This is when your embryos divide directly from 1 to 3 cells instead of dividing normally from 1 to 2 to 4 to 8. Another abnormal cleavage pattern is when embryos go from a higher to a lower cell number.

Traditional evaluation misses more than 70% of embryos that have an abnormal number of nuclei. An abnormal number of nuclei has been shown to result in lower implantation rates.

Improve your chances with EmbryoScope

The use of time-lapse has been associated with significantly higher ongoing clinical pregnancy rate, significantly lower early pregnancy loss and a significantly increased live birth rate compared to traditional culture.

Use of time-lapse for embryo selection increases the chances of achieving a live birth

A report has summarised the combined results of five clinical studies. In 1637 patient treatments, there was a statistically significant improvement in ongoing pregnancy rate as well as live birth rate and a significantly lower early pregnancy loss in the treatments where EmbryoScope was used, compared to traditional culture and evaluation.