Automation of Gamete Preparation, Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI), Embryo Culture, and Vitrification

Patients undergoing an assisted conception treatment with medical indication to perform ICSI may be recruited in this study. The study will follow a sibling-oocyte and/or sibling embryo study design where oocytes and/or embryos obtained from a specific patient or couple will be randomly distributed across two groups (test and control) and undergo one or more elements of an automated assisted conception laboratory workflow (for the test group) or a standard assisted conception laboratory workflow (for the control group). Before distributing the samples, an embryologist will slightly blur the vision of the samples so that their morphology can no longer be clearly assessed. Robotic automation may include any of the following steps: robotic sperm preparation, robotic oocyte selection and denudation, robotic sperm injection, automated embryo culture, and automated cryopreservation. The resulting embryos may be employed for embryo transfer.

Routine Manual Icsi Workflow