Dr. Wisot quoted in Scientific American article on EEVA

RPMG’s Dr. Arthur Wisot was quoted in a Scientific American article on the new EEVA system. RPMG was involved in the study that led to FDA clearance of the device.

The Early Embryo Viability Assessment (EEVA) test is the only such FDA–approved technology designed to analyze embryos and help fertility specialists select the embryo or embryos most likely to proceed to the blastocyst stage.

The EEVA has two parts: First, a time-lapse camera is affixed to an incubator so that it can take snapshots of the embryo every five minutes for the first 48 hours of cell division. That data is then automatically fed into a specialized algorithm that assigns each embryo in that incubator a “grade,” judging how good it looks compared with a benchmark normal embryo. The EEVA system is not meant to be used instead of traditional morphology evaluation but rather as a complement after embryo specialists have winnowed down their top candidates using the usual methods. Then, the EEVA’s software will analyze the images it took of the embryo and spit out its “high” or “low” grades assessing which embryos will likely do well progressing to the blastocyst stage.

Ideally, the embryo would be transferred into the uterus three days after the egg was inseminated to minimize the amount of time it spends outside of the body, although some clinics do wait until day five. “I’m impressed that [the EEVA] does such a good job,” says Arthur Wisot, a staff physician at the southern California–based fertility clinic, Reproductive Partners Medical Group. “The thing that differentiates it from other time-lapse systems is that it has unique time-lapse image analysis software that, automatically, without subjective human involvement, can tell us that this embryo has a high probability of reaching the blastocyst stage or not,” he says.

The EEVA test is available at Reproductive Partners.