Low sperm and/or poor sperm quality are the reasons why a third of couples fail to conceive despite repeated efforts. As most men would find it awkward to visit a clinic to get a test done, a new smartphone-based system is now an available option for checking their fertility in the privacy of their own home.
“I thought a smartphone microscope could be an easy way to look at problems with male fertility,” reasons Yoshitomo Kobori of the Dokkyo Medical University Koshigaya Hospital in Japan. Kobori and his colleagues at the University of Illinois in Chicago have created a microscope that contains a lens less than a millimetre thick that is inserted into a plastic “jacket”, reports New Scientist. When this lens is fixed to the camera of a smartphone, it magnifies an image by 555 times.
All you have to do is simply wait for around five minutes after ejaculation for the semen to liquefy, then spread a small amount to a plastic sheet and press it against the microscope. After that the phone camera can be used to capture a 3-second video clip of the sperm. When this clip is uploaded to a computer and viewed enlarged on a monitor screen, one can easily count the total number of sperm and the number that are moving.
Currently, Kobori and his team are also developing a phone app that will enable on-the-spot analysis of semen samples. This smartphone microscope is already commercially available in Japan and will soon be on sale in other countries.
