Showing posts with label sperm. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sperm. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Trak fertility tracker, a breakthrough in at home sperm count testing launched.


SandstoneDiagnostics, a company based at Livermore, CA has launched Trak, a revolutionary new approach to male fertility that helps men test, learn and try to improve their sperm count over time. 

Many couples simply delay fertility treatment because the male partner is not comfortable in getting a semen analysis in the laboratory. Well, Trak not only measures sperm count based on current world health organization (WHO) guidelines and clinical research, from the comfort and privacy of your home, but it also offers you advice to improve the reproductive health.

This easy to use, first FDA cleared Trak engine uses centrifugal separation technique to isolate and quantify sperm count. The results are displayed like a thermometer reading as Low, Moderate or Optimal for conception.


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The kit that is available on Amazon, costs 199 $ for four testing sets. It is mailed to your doorsteps in discrete package and each set includes a collection cup, a dropper, a stick that the company calls a prop, and two seals. Shop At Home Male Fertility Testing System by Trak

Simultaneously, set up the Trak app on your smart phone and have to feed in answers to simple life style questions. The app will give you a basic score and combined with the sperm test results, you get information to make changes in your life style to improve your low results.





Many other at home sperm count testing devices are available but the combination of centrifugal system and app to improve reproductive health gives it an edge over other devices. 

Here is a video about how the test works.


Media Courtesy: https://trakfertility.com

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Highest Resolution Images Ever of Eggs, Sperm, and Embryos captured using 5K ultra-HD video.

High resolution image of 5day old human blastocyst 

Morphology is the gold standard by which we can assess the quality of embryos and gametes for success of various fertility treatments.

Imaging science in Reproductive Medicine has not made much significant advances since the last decade. Current options consist of either direct visualization through microscope objectives (limited magnification) or image capture via CCD/CMOS chip and inspection on a monitor (limited resolution).

Doctors attending the recent American Society for Reproductive Medicine’s annual meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, got the opportunity to visualize first-ever 5K ultra-HD video footage of eggs, sperm, and embryos. It amounts to 14 million pixels per frame, 7 times more than the 1080p Full HD living room television.

The man behind this amazing achievement is Steven F. Palter, MD, a fertility specialist and scientific director at Gold Coast IVF in Woodbury, NY. CDC recently recognized Gold Coast IVF for having highest success rate in USA.

Dr. Palter designed a coupling system to make the RED Camera compatible with an embryo microscope. RED is ultra-high-resolution digital camera company that has revolutionized the movie industry in Hollywood.

860 recordings of eggs, sperm and embryos were made during IVF and ICSI procedures at 400x-960x magnification. The final images then were magnified digitally many times more on 55 inch 4k observation screens, producing the highest magnification and resolution video of these human cells which yielded observations of new cellular details. Movement of individual sperm was observed using high frame that simplified selection.

Dr. Palter said “The images are the sharpest, most revealing images of eggs, sperm, and embryos ever created anywhere. At this level, we are exploring a new frontier of knowledge about human reproduction. It’s an unexplored, uncharted world and we saw new details of the cells never seen before.”

Cellular details and image quality was far superior than what can be viewed with standard microscope. Although, no new structure was identified, the new 5K ultra-HD images could better delineate the morphology of sperms, eggs and embryos for selecting and improving the results of ARTs.

Further validation studies are being carried out currently.

Full text of article in Fertility and Sterility Journal can be accessed here.