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Check for male infertility using a smart phone

SCIENCE & HEALTH  >  ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

Using a smartphone to screen for male infertility

Easy-to-use app and accessory analyzes sperm concentration and motility with 98 percent accuracy  
March 22, 2017 | Editor's Pick Audio/Video
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Credit: Shafiee Lab
A smartphone-based semen analyzer (photo 1) can be used to test for male infertility. The 3-D printed setup costs less than $5 and can analyze most semen samples in fewer than 5 seconds (photo 2). The optical attachment connects to the smartphone (photo 3).
By Haley Bridger, BWH Communications
More than 45 million couples worldwide grapple with infertility, but current standard methods for diagnosing male infertility can be expensive, labor-intensive, and require testing in a clinical setting.
Cultural and social stigma, and lack of access in resource-limited countries, may prevent men from seeking an evaluation. Investigators at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) set out to develop a home-based diagnostic test that could be used to measure semen quality with a smartphone-based device. New findings by the team indicating that the analyzer can identify abnormal semen samples based on sperm concentration and motility criteria with approximately 98 percent accuracy are published online in today’s Science Translational Medicine.
“We wanted to come up with a solution to make male infertility testing as simple and affordable as home pregnancy tests,” said Hadi Shafiee, a principal investigator in the Division of Engineering in Medicine and Renal Division of Medicine at BWH. “Men have to provide semen samples in these rooms at a hospital, a situation in which they often experience stress, embarrassment, pessimism, and disappointment. Current clinical tests are lab-based, time-consuming, and subjective. This test is low-cost, quantitative, highly accurate, and can analyze a video of an undiluted, unwashed semen sample in less than five seconds.”
The analyzer consists of an optical attachment that can connect to a smartphone and a disposable device onto which a semen sample can be loaded. The new test utilizes the advancements in consumer electronics and microfabrication. A disposable microchip with a capillary tip and a rubber bulb is used for simple, power-free semen sample handling. The team also designed a user-friendly smartphone application that guides the user through each step of testing, and a miniaturized weight scale that wirelessly connects to smartphones to measure total sperm count.

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