With a click of a mouse button: Artificial intelligence (AI) brings fast and objective embryo assessment to IVF

World-first clinical study, published in Nature Medicine, demonstrates that a deep-learning AI software developed by Vitrolife Group (intelligent data analysis score: iDAScore®), which does not require human input, is 10x faster than standard manual assessment and provides similar clinical outcomes.

Dr Peter Illingworth, Medical Director, Strategic Growth of Virtus Health and the Principal Investigator for the study said “The aim of the study was to determine if this particular AI tool could be used within IVF clinics to potentially improve workflow efficiency, without decreasing clinical outcomes.” Currently, embryos are manually assessed by trained embryologists and ranked to determine the order in which they will be transferred back to the patient. This process is time consuming and requires professional staff with many years of experience. Furthermore, the subjective nature of the assessment means that there is human variation.

In 1999, Prof Gardner, Scientific Director of Virtus Health, co-author and Vitrolife Group collaborator, introduced to the IVF field a manual ranking system to assess blastocyst morphology. He said “While this commonly used manual system has been effective, it suffers from subjectivity and inherent variation between different embryologists. Further, it takes several seconds to grade each blastocyst. Our world-first trial demonstrates that blastocyst selection using AI can, not only attain similar pregnancy rates to using the Gardner grade, but it dramatically reduces the time associated with the process.”

iDAScore is an advanced version of an earlier AI tool, which was created by a collaboration between Virtus Health and Harrison AI. Vitrolife acquired this technology in 2019 and developed it to be used with our suite of EmbryoScope time-lapse incubators. Vitrolife’s Technology Data Science Manager, Jorgen Berntsen said “It is an exciting time for AI within the field of IVF. This is exemplified by the fact that the version of iDAScore used in the study has already been improved using twenty times more data than the original AI tool acquired from Virtus Health”.

Bronwyn Brophy, Vitrolife Group CEO, said “Vitrolife Group is deeply committed to supporting IVF clinics in improving their efficiency and efficacy. We believe that the best way to do this is to work closely with our clinical partners. The development of iDAScore and this study is a great example of such a collaboration.” Dr Illingworth agreed and said that “Together with our collaborators, we’re very proud to be the first in the world to carry out a randomised trial to evaluate the embryo selection ability of a deep-learning AI compared to an embryologist manually assessing them, based on physical appearance. There is no doubt this study has huge significance, as we have witnessed first-hand at our clinics how it has improved the way we work.”

About the study:
The randomised controlled study included 1,066 participants and was carried out in 14 IVF clinics across Australia and Europe. The pre-clinical validation of this AI technology was conducted in Virtus Health clinics across Australia and Denmark from 10,638 embryos. This study found iDAScore® produced an almost ten-fold reduction in time to evaluate an embryo, 21.3+/- 18.1 seconds, compared to 208.3 +/-144.7 seconds using a standard manual assessment. The pregnancy rates in the two groups were clinically similar (46.5% in the iDAScore group and 48.2% in the embryologist group). The paper “Deep learning vs. manual morphology-based embryo selection in IVF: a randomised, double blind, non-inferiority trial” is published in Nature Medicine.

About iDAScore® AI technology:
The initiation of iDAScore® development occurred after a chance meeting back in 2018 when Dr Simon Cooke, IVF Australia’s Scientific Director, was presenting at UNSW explaining the enormous challenge embryologists face when analysing vast amounts of data to manually review an embryo’s development. Final year medical student Aengus Tran was in the audience and recognised that AI could assist this data issue. After months of collaboration with Dr Tran and Virtus Health’s scientific teams, a partnership was formed and the AI software, now known as ‘IVY’ was created. IVY AI had its early promising findings published in a leading peer-reviewed journal which gained world-wide citations. The findings were published in Human Reproduction (May 2019). In April 2019 Virtus Health entered a transfer and collaboration of IVY to Swedish company Vitrolife - the manufacturer of EmbryoScope time lapse incubators. The IVY AI system has now been further developed to generate iDAScore®. Compared to the original IVY model, iDAScore used in this study was developed on ten times more data. The latest commercial version of iDAScore boasts nearly twenty times more data, which highlights the speed of innovation.

Contact:
Patrik Tolf, CFO, phone +46 (0) 31 766 90 21

This is a translation of the Swedish version of the press release. When in doubt, the Swedish wording prevails.

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Vitrolife Group is a global provider of medical devices and genetic services. Based on science and advanced research capabilities, we develop services and products for personalized genetic information and medical device products. We are supporting our customers by improving their clinical practice and the outcome of the patient’s fertility treatment. Currently, we are approximately 1,100 people worldwide, headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden. 

Vitrolife Group’s products and services are available in more than 125 countries, through our own presence in more than 25 countries and a network of distributors. We are a sustainable market leader and aim to be the preferred partner to the IVF-clinics by providing superior products and services with the vision to enable people to fulfil the dream of having a healthy baby. The Vitrolife AB (publ) share is listed on the Nasdaq Stockholm.
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Vitrolife AB (publ), Box 9080, SE-400 92 Gothenburg, Sweden. Corporate identity number 556354-3452.Tel: +46 31 721 80 00. Fax: +46 31 721 80 99. E-mail: info@vitrolife.com. Website: www.vitrolifegroup.com.