Infertility affects 7% of men worldwide, but AI may hold the key to overcoming this challenge. Dr. Steven Vasilescu and his team have developed SpermSearch, an AI system that can identify viable sperm in samples from severely infertile men 1,000 times faster than a human expert.
For men with non-obstructive azoospermia (NOA), a condition where they have no sperm in their ejaculate, the traditional method involves a time-consuming and manual search for healthy sperm in surgically extracted testes tissue. SpermSearch changes this.
By training the AI with thousands of tissue sample images, the team created a system that can quickly and accurately identify healthy sperm in seconds, vastly improving the speed and efficiency of the process. While the technology is still in its proof-of-concept stage, it holds the promise of giving men with NOA a chance to father their own biological children.
As male infertility continues to rise, AI-driven innovations like SpermSearch might play a crucial role in addressing this issue. With reduced sperm counts attributed to various factors, from pollution to stress, AI technology could become a game-changer in fertility treatments. However, these innovations take time to develop and must undergo rigorous testing before becoming widely available.
With the potential for live pregnancies on the horizon, AI offers new hope for addressing male infertility.