10105055AutoICSI-Sperm: An AI-based Fully-automated Sperm Selection To Improve Fertility SuccessActiveCollaborative R&DInnovate UKInfertility is the most common healthcare condition for adults in their 30s-40s, affecting 3.5m people in the UK alone, and 15% of all couples worldwide. It has been declared a Global Public Health Issue by WHO, and global fertility rates are expected to decline further to 2.4% by 2030(UN). Around 50% of fertility issues are male-related and of these 90% are due to sperm number, mobility or motility and have been shown to reduce chance of pregnancy, reduce quality of embryo and are negatively correlated with miscarriages. Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection(ICSI) is a clinical procedure whereby a sperm is injected into an egg to assist fertilisation. Despite ICSI having been around for more than 25 years and importance of high-quality sperm for successful ICSI, 'best' sperm is **manually** selected by an embryologist based on sperm morphology and motility. The operation is dependent on the skills and experience of the embryologist. This project will see the University of Birmingham collaborate with Myma Medical Ltd. and a leading IVF clinic, Cambridge-IVF to develop autoICSI-Sperm; an advanced AI-based microfluidics system to automate sperm selection, isolation, quality evaluation, and immobilisation processes all in a single, integrated lab-on-a-chip device. Based on WHO guidelines, autoICSI-Sperm will automatically select a healthy sperm from a whole semen sample for subsequent injection into an egg. By enabling full automated sperm selection our technology can overcome the challenges of the current manual approach, helping improve success rates for couples, profitability for clinics, and cost-effectiveness for NHS Integrated Care Systems (ICSs). As a stand-alone product, autoICSI-Sperm will address critical points of failure within the current process by automatically trapping and isolation of individual healthy sperm, vision recognition to digitally tag the healthiest sperm, and an AI-assisted, real-time data-driven quality assessment for motility and morphology using WHO guidelines. Automatic sperm immobilisation will then take place prior to injection. However, we will also focus on developing autoICSI-Sperm as an AI-based innovation for integration into our in-development autoICSI-Egg system, which offers automated egg manipulation and fully-automated precision sperm injection, to form the world's first complete automatic ICSI system. The main project output will be an automatic sperm-selection system ready for pre-clinical trials, taking us closer to commercial launch. A completely new offering, vastly improving current IVF processes worldwide and an opportunity for Myma Medical and the UK to become world leaders in the $23.4b Artificial Reproductive Technology market.