Quantitative Analysis of Locomotive Behavior of Human Sperm Head and Tail

Sperm selection plays a significant role in in

vitro

fertilization (IVF). Approaches for assessing sperm quality include non-invasive techniques based on sperm morphology and motility as well as invasive techniques for checking DNA integrity. In 2006, a new device using hyaluronic acid (HA) coated dish for sperm selection was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and entered IVF clinics. In this technique, only sperms with DNA integrity bind to the HA droplet, after which these bound sperm stop revealing head motion and their tail movement becomes more vigorous. However, selecting a single sperm cell from among HAbound sperms is

ad hoc

in IVF clinics. Different from existing sperm tracking algorithms that are largely limited to tracking sperm head only and are only able to track one sperm at a time, this paper presents a multi-sperm tracking algorithm that tracks both sperm heads and low-contrast sperm tails. The tracking results confirm a significant correlation between sperm head velocity and tail beating amplitude; demonstrate that sperms bound to HA generally have a higher velocity (before binding) than those sperms that are not able to bind to HA microdots; and quantitatively reveal that HA-bound sperms’ tail beating amplitudes are different among HA-bound sperms.