Key benefits

• Assess eggs for metaphase II maturity
• Screen for multi-polar or broken spindles prior to ICSI
• Position the egg correctly for sperm injection
• Assess egg quality quantitatively using automatic spindle and zona density measurements
• Avoid damaging the genetic material during ICSI

Oocyte screening can make all the difference

Oosight™ enables you to determine which subpopulation of oocytes are at high risk for producing chromosomally abnormal embryos. One in approximately 20 cycles contains oocytes that are immature but are nevertheless falsely labelled MII using conventional imaging techniques. Oosight™ can prevent the potentially damaging effects that result from injecting immature oocytes. The system can also help screen for oocytes with highly disrupted spindles, such as those that are multipolar.

An easy add-on

The Oosight™ system integrates seamlessly onto your ICSI workstation. Now with foot pedal controls and automated spindle and zona tools, measuring each oocyte is a simple 2-step process. Snap an image and then press a button to report the data. Meaningful retardance and orientation data are organized into an intuitive, exportable report. It’s really that simple.

Oosight™ Imaging Systems

*The Spindle And Zona Finder are tools in the Oosight™ software used to automatically find and report on spindle and zona metrics, including mean retardance and orientation offset.

NOTE: The Oosight™ system is compatible with most research-grade microscopes and laser systems. Glass bottom dishes are required.

  Oosight Brochure (2.5 MiB, 1,424 hits)

What are the benefits of imaging spindles?

The benefits of imaging spindles include:

• The presence of an intact spindle can be used to assess egg health.
• The spindle is an accurate identifier of egg maturation. Polar body extrusion often falsely identifies eggs as mature well before they reach MII.
• Significant spindle migration from the polar body (i.e., >90°) is indicative of compromised egg health.
• Spindle morphology has been correlated with chromosomal abnormalities, such as aneuploidy, and can be both observed and measured using Oosight’s retardance and orientation calculations.
• ICSI with the spindle at 6 o’clock results in fewer fragmented embryos.
• The spindle is a good indicator of sub-optimal extrinsic factors such as temperature and pH.

What are the benefits of imaging the tri-laminar zona pellucida?

The benefits of imaging the tri-laminar zona pellucida include:

• The retardance of the inner zona pellucida has shown a strong correlation to pregnancy, offering a useful metric to include in grading quality.
• The alignment of glycoproteins of the inner zona can identify weak points or disrupted morphology.
• The Oosight’s pseudocolor map of retardancecan help identify weak points of molecular order in the zona, either for assisted hatching and/or biopsy

Can I see the spindle whilst doing micromanipulation?

Yes, you can see the spindle through your microscope’s eyepieces and in the live Oosight™ Video window on the computer monitor.

What is birefringence?

The spindle and zona pellucida both exhibit an intrinsic optical property called “birefringence”. This is due to the oriented microtubule structure of the spindle and the oriented glycoproteins of the zona pellucida, respectively. Birefringence, also known as double refraction, is an optical phenomenon that occurs when a polarized beam passes through an anisotropic structure (e.g., the spindle) causing the beam of light to be split into two polarization components, where the velocity of one is slowed down relative to the other.

What is retardance?

“Retardance” is the distance between the faster and slower beams leaving a birefringent material. Like any distance, it can be measured in miles, inches, kilometers, meters, millimeters, micrometers or nanometers (nm). We report it as nanometers on a per pixel basis in a megapixel image. Data have shown that higher mean spindle and inner zona retardances both correlate to egg health.

Why dont I see a spindle in all or the majority of the eggs that I am imaging?

Most of the time, the reason for not seeing the spindle is either that the eggs are not fully matured, you need to rotate the egg, or your temperature-controlled stage is not maintaining the egg at its optimal temperature. Glass-heated stages tend to yield the best thermal stability as compared to metal heated stages. Large open-aperture metal stages (i.e., =25mm) are not suitable as they create too much of a heat sink effect, and lead to spindle de-polymerization. A lack of a visible spindle may also indicate other environmental or biological issues.

Can I use the Oosight™ imaging system on any microscope?

The system can be integrated to fit most research-grade Microscopes that have 100W illumination, including:

Leica:

DMI-IRB, DMI-IRE, DMI-x000 series

Nikon:

Diaphot, Diaphot TMD, Diaphot 200/300, TE-200/300, TE2000, Eclipse Ti

Olympus:

IX-50/70/80, IX-51/71/81

Zeiss:

Axiovert 100/135, Axiovert 200, AxioObserver series

Is the Oosight™ system compatible with my laser system?

The Oosight system has been adapted for use on workstations outfitted with the Hamilton-Thorne Biosciences Zilos and XY-Clone laser systems, as well as the Research Instrument’s Saturn and Saturn-Active system. Contact CRi for additional details.

Can I export data into my database?

With the ‘export to clipboard’ function, meaningful spindle and zona data can be easily exported to most database programs.

Can the system print reports?

The new “Reports” tool allows you to not only print images, but also any data and related notes associated with images for any given patient, sample and/or session. Reports are also automatically saved into PDF format for easy electronic handling.