Tracking extraction of blastomere for embryo biopsy

There is an emerging demand for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which is a procedure that diagnoses the embryo to prevent genetic diseases. This is especially true in developed countries where birth rates are dramatically low and assisted reproductive technology is gaining importance to obtain the birth of a healthy child. One procedure of PGD is embryo biopsy, which involves making an incision to the zona pellucida before extracting a blastomere from an in vitro fertilization embryo to test for genetic conditions (eg: thalassemia, cystic fibrosis) or genetic markers of cancer before transferring the embryo to the uterus. The current procedure is performed manually on day 3 when the embryo is at its 8-cells stage (meaning 8 blastomeres). However, embryos are fragile and dependent on optimal growth condition. Current manual methods are challenging and require necessitate outstanding technical skills only displayed by very experienced embryologists. One portion of the challenging task is the extraction of the blastomere. A steady extraction is required to avoid damaging the precious embryo. The extraction must not be performed too rapidly because the neighboring blastomeres will be affected and the embryo´s viability will be compromised. Hence, this paper proposes a tracking algorithm to track the movement of the blastomere during extraction under a microscope as the first step to solving the extraction issue.