An artificial intelligence program can help doctors analyze ultrasound scans to determine the best timing for a hormone injection associated with collecting eggs, researchers write in a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications. Adobe -stock
Artificial intelligence may stimulate the success rate of vitro fertilization in hopeful families.
An AI program can help doctors analyze ultrasound scans to determine the best timing for a hormone injection associated with egg collection, researchers write in a new study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.
Making the timing good can optimize the number of collected eggs and improve the chance of a successful pregnancy, researchers said.
“IVF offers help and hope for many patients who are unable to become pregnant, but it is an invasive, expensive and time-consuming treatment,” said Co-Senior researcher Dr. Ali Abbara, a clinic scientist at Imperial College London, in a press release from the school.
“It can be heartbreaking if it fails, so it is important to ensure that this treatment is as effective as possible,” Abbara continued. “AI can offer a new paradigm in how we deliver IVF treatment and can lead to better results for patients.”
Doctors use ultrasound scans to check the size of the follicles, those small bags are in the ovaries that contain eggs.
These scans determine when the woman will receive a “trigger” hormone injection to prepare the eggs for collection, researchers said.
The timing of the trigger is an important decision, because the injection is less effective if the follicles are too small or too large, researchers said.
For this study, researchers had analyzed an AI program for more than 19,000 patients who had completed IVF treatment in one of the 11 clinics in the United Kingdom and two in Poland between 2005 and 2023.
The AI found that delivering the hormone injection when most follicles are between 13 millimeters and 18 mm. Improved the chance to pick up more eggs and have more successful pregnancies, researchers said.
That is more accurate than the current method, in which doctors generally give the trigger when two or three follicles are larger than 17 mm. up to 18 mm.
“This is an exciting development, because the findings suggest that we can use information from a much wider set of follicle sizes to decide when patients are activated instead of just the size of only the biggest follicles – which is used in current clinical practice,” Abbara added.
The team plans to create an AI tool that will personalize the IVF treatment and support the decision -making of the doctor during several steps in the IVF process.
“Where the deployment is so high to make the best possible decision, this technique can support the decision-making of doctors and lead to better results for patients,” said Co-Senior author Thomas Heinis with the Department of Computing of Imperial College London.
“It is important that we expect that componentially will improve computing power in the near future, so that we can make decisions using precise data in a way that was not possible before,” Heinis added.
More information
Planned Parenthood has more about IVF.
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