AI-based fertility system boosting pregnancy success

A new fertility treatment that uses artificial intelligence to recognise and sort embryos has been launched by the Prague Fertility Centre.

CATI (Cognitive automation of time-lapse images) sorts embryos according to selected morphokinetic criteria which are obtained from time-lapse systems. This plays an important role in IVF with aneuploidy screening (PGS) in preventing the misdiagnosis of mosaic embryos.

The system was developed by Daniel Hlinka, co-owner and head embryologist at the Prague Fertility Centre. Combining CATI with PGS boosts success rates by 30-40%, meaning that a woman with a 20% chance of pregnancy will reach the rates of a younger woman who has 50-60% chance of success.

About the system Hlinka said: “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 significance 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%).

Hlinka continued: “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.”