Improving human embryos selection in vitro fertilization (IVF) by ATR-FTIR spectroscopy and chemometric approach

Potential Embryo quality is crucial to the outcome of in vitro fertilization (IVF); however, the ability to precisely distinguish the embryos with higher reproductive potential from others is poor. Morphologic evaluation used to play an important role in assessing embryo quality, but it is somewhat subjective. The culture media is the immediate environment of the embryos in vitro, and a change of the substances in the culture medium is possibly related to the embryo quality. FT-IR spectroscopy analysis were used to report metabolomic parameters, established on the basis of observed biomarker targets. FT-IR may also be used as a quantitative method for determining concentrations of components within a sample.FT-IR spectra contain information on functional group vibrations resulting in the absorbance of infrared light at specific wave numbers (1/λ). The majority of these regions can be identified to be vibrational modes from water (O–H stretch centred at 3400 cm–1), fatty acids (CHx stretches at 2956–2850 cm– 1), proteins (amide I, C = O at 1652–1648 cm–1; amide II, N–H, C–N at 1550–1548 cm–1), polysaccharide (ring and C–O vibrations at 1085–1052 cm–1), and there is also a mixed region from 1460–1110 cm–1 which contains information from fatty acids, polysaccharide, nucleic acids and proteins.[1-3]In this prospective embryo quality was determined by analyzing culture media after fertilization by attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy with classification technique. Classification model was built using Partial Least Square-Discriminant Analysis (PLS-DA) and the performance model was evaluated in terms of sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, efficiency and Matthews’s correlation coefficient. The PLS-DA models give sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and efficiency values in the ranges of 80–100%, showing good performance of the classification models. Results showed that the Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy with PLS-DA can be used as an analytical tool to analyze human embryo culture media in IVF treatment.This procedure is also rapid, reliable, and reducing the influence of the embryologist experience on results.