A US couple tried for 18 years to have a child. Artificial intelligence brought a breakthrough.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, after 18 years of trying to get pregnant, a couple is pregnant with their first child, reports CNN.

Over the course of 18 years, the woman and man, who wished to remain anonymous, visited fertility centers around the world, undergoing multiple in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures. In vitro fertilization involves taking a woman’s egg and combining it with sperm in a laboratory to create an embryo, which is then implanted in the uterus.

In this couple, IVF attempts failed because of azoospermia—a lack of sperm in the semen. While a typical semen sample contains hundreds of millions of sperm, azoospermic men have so few sperm in their semen that, despite lengthy searches, they cannot be seen under a microscope. There can be as much as 100 million times fewer than normal.

The couple eventually turned to Columbia University Fertility Center, which uses a new method called STAR, which uses artificial intelligence (AI). AI can help identify and recover hidden sperm even in men who don’t seem to have any at all.

Once a sperm sample is placed under a specially designed microscope, the STAR system—which stands for Sperm Tracking and Recovery—uses a high-speed camera and high-powered imaging technology to scan the sample, taking more than 8 million pictures an hour to find sperm. The system instantly isolates the sperm in a tiny drop of medium, allowing embryologists to recover cells they might never be able to find or identify with their own eyes.

In this case, three sperm were found and used to fertilize the wife's eggs. After the embryo was implanted, the pregnancy is progressing normally, and the baby is due in December.

A growing number of medical facilities in the U.S. are using AI to help assess egg quality or evaluate embryos when patients undergo in vitro fertilization. It’s estimated that male partners account for up to 40 percent of all infertility cases in the United States, and up to 10 percent of men with infertility have azoospermia. Most of them feel completely healthy and normal. There are no problems with sexual function, and their semen looks normal, too. Traditionally, treatment options for azoospermia have included a cumbersome surgery to take sperm directly from the patient’s testicles—or using someone else’s sperm.

Paweł Wernicki (PAP)

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