COMPUTER AUTOMATED SPERM HEAD MORPHOMETRY ANALYSIS (ASMA) OF GOAT SPERMATOZOA

The development of computer automated sperm morphometry analysis (ASMA ) allows for the objective analysis of sperm head dimensions. A number of studies have been performed to optimize the efficiency of these sy stems when analyzing spermatozoa from a Variety of species. in this st udy, frozen semen from 10 fertile goat bucks was thawed and prepared o n slides for morphometric analysis to evaluate technical variation and to standardize ASMA procedures for goat spermatozoa. Methods of stain ing, the number of spermatozoa necessary to sample and optimal microsc opic magnification were assessed. Staining for 20 min in hematoxylin ( HEM) was found to be optimal. The most efficient method of analyzing g oat sperm morphometry was to evaluate 100 sperm cells at x20 objective magnification. Using these techniques, a sample could be analyzed in approximately 2 min. The system properly recognized and digitized sper matozoa 96% of the time with a target recognition error rate of less t han 1%. The morphometric measurements of sperm heads for all 10 bucks were the following: length =7.69 mu m, width=3.80 mu m, width/length r atio=0.5, area=22.82 mu m and perimeter=20.15 mu m. The mean coefficie nts of variation (CV) for all bucks ranged from 3.4% for length to 5.8 % for area. Standardized sample preparation techniques and analysis we re found to improve the efficiency of ASMA.