Abstract
The fundamental test for male infertility, semen analysis, is mostly a manually performed subjective and time-consuming process and the use of automated systems has been cost prohibitive. We have previously developed an inexpensive smartphone-based system for at-home male infertility screening through automatic and rapid measurement of sperm concentration and motility. Here, we assessed the feasibility of using a similar smartphone-based system for laboratory use in measuring: a) Hyaluronan Binding Assay (HBA) score, a quantitative score describing the sperm maturity and fertilization potential in a semen sample, b) sperm viability, which assesses sperm membrane integrity, and c) sperm DNA fragmentation that assesses the degree of DNA damage. There was good correlation between the manual analysis and smartphone-based analysis for the HBA score when the device was tested with 31 fresh, unprocessed human semen samples. The smartphone-based approach performed with an accuracy of 87% in sperm classification when the HBA score was set at manufacturer’s threshold of 80. Similarly, the sperm viability and DNA fragmentation tests were also shown to be compatible with the smartphone-based system when tested with 102 and 47 human semen samples, respectively.
Highlights
Infertility estimates suggest that worldwide, almost 50 million couples are affected and the male factor has been reported as the cause for 20% to 70% of these cases [1]
The goodness of fit as indicated by the coefficient of determination (R2) was 0.87. These results indicate a good linearity between the two methods for Hyaluronic Binding Assay (HBA) score estimation
We were able to show that a smartphone-based semen analyzer can rapidly analyze sperm specimens and identify abnormal samples with accuracies similar to those measured using conventional manual analytic methods for HBA, sperm viability, and sperm DNA fragmentation
Summary
Infertility estimates suggest that worldwide, almost 50 million couples are affected and the male factor has been reported as the cause for 20% to 70% of these cases [1]. Agarwal et al showed that up to 12% of men will suffer from infertility during their lifetime, with rates in Africa and Eastern Europe being the highest [2]. Semen analysis has always been the primary test for male infertility. Advances in consumer electronics and microfabrication and mobile. Automated smartphone-based system for sperm function tests for Reproductive Medicine, and Society for Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility received by H.S. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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