Selecting viable sperm for IVF treatment involves looking through a microscope at how the little buggers zip around a Petri dish, but the view is two-dimensional and doesn’t reveal the details of the sperm’s motion. Now a new method has been developed by an international team of researchers that tracks the movement and shape of the sperm cells in 3D and displays the visualization in real-time.
The technique relies on splitting a laser beam into two, sending one through the dish containing the sperm, magnifying it, and then reuniting it with the second half of the beam. The resulting interference between the beam halves creates a hologram that displays the shape and motion. Here’s a quick video of the system showing its live tracking abilities:
Study in Biomedical Optics Express: 4D tracking of clinical seminal samples for quantitative characterization of motility parameters…
Press release: First 3-D Movies of Living Sperm…