Artificial Intelligence for Sperm Selection in Artificial Reproductive Technology

Intracytoplasmic spermatid injection (ICSI) is part of IVF treatment where the a single sperm is injected into a single oocyte. It treats male factor infertility. During an IVF cycle female participants have their oocytes collected during an Oocyte Pick Up under sedation in an operating theatre. The male participant produces a semen sample by masturbation around the time their partner is in theatre. The ICSI procedure is performed by an experienced Clinical Embryologist. All these procedures are part of their clinical treatment and occur regardless if they participate in the study or not. The observation will involve the Clinical Embryologist pressing record and the entire procedure will be video recorded off the microscope. The time required for the procedure depends on the number of eggs and the difficulty in finding appropriate sperm to inject. It takes approximately 2 minutes to inject an egg. Participants can only be enrolled for 1 IVF cycle. The participants have no involvement in this procedure as the gametes have already been collected from them. The only involvement required of male participants is to fill out the study specific semen production form. This is the same form all patients must fill out but with 4 additional questions. The sample is provided for the IVF treatment, not the study. All maternal, paternal and embryo information collection requires no involvement from the participants. This is all information routinely collected as part of the IVF treatment process. The end point of follow up for the participants is 9 months after an embryo transfer of an embryo created during this IVF cycle. This includes any subsequent frozen embryo transfers. We will be looking at live birth outcomes at this point. There is no involvement required from the patients other than filling out the semen production form. Live birth data must be collected by the IVF Clinic as part of their reporting obligations. The semen production will be happening in semen production rooms, or off site in the participants home. The ICSI procedure will be recorded on microscopes located inside the embryology labs at Clayton and Hawthorn sites. The researcher is not assessing the motility, direction of travel or morphology of the sperm selected in the video recording. They will be cropping out footage of the particular injected sperm and those images will be inputs into a machine learning algorithm. The algorithm may be checking head and neck morphology but this has not determined at this stage. Analysis of residual semen samples: A semen analysis including test simplets pre-stained slides for morphology. Morphology assessment as per WHO Examination and processing of human semen. Halosperm for DNA damage assessment and ROS level assessment using DCFDA and/or MitoSOX Red.