During a separate session, Catherine Racowksy, Ph.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, made some general comments on the use of time-lapse imaging for optimizing the selection of embryos for IVF. "Time-lapse imaging really does hold a great deal of promise," she said. It is a noninvasive approach, and several teams have shown that the kinetic time points being assessed can be replicated.
"The tracking algorithms derived from retrospective cohort imaging data show that there are these key early cell cycle parameters that have value in predicting blastocyst formation and the ploidy of the embryo," Dr. Racowsky commented.
Prospective, randomized trial data are critical before this technology hits routine practice. "We cannot have these machines in the lab, hoping that they are going to help us in predicting the development potential of embryos if we haven’t proven to ourselves that they really are better than just looking down a microscope at static time points," she concluded.
Dr. Conaghan and Dr. Racowsky reported having no relevant financial disclosures.