NEW SYSTEM FOR LONG-TERM MONITORING OF SPERM MOTILITY - EDTA EFFECT ON SEMEN

Many drugs act as sperm stimulants and are of clinical value for male infertility. Current research deals with the physiological mechanisms of sperm motility/sperm stimulation and how long the effect lasts. For such a study, long-term monitoring of sperm motility becomes essentia l for traditional semen evaluation. A new system was designed to deal with the microscopic images of semen. Its performance was evaluated by studying the effect of EDTA on sperm motility. EDTA increased sperm c urvilinear velocity (V-cl) and straight-line velocity (V-sl) by 31 and 20%. EDTA also prolonged the duration of motility by 68 and 61%, resp ectively. However, EDTA had less effect on the linearity of forward pr ogression (L-in). The proposed system can analyze semen and does well at monitoring sperm motility for short term and long term. It may be v aluable to test the possible role of sperm stimulation for male infert ility and assisted reproduction.