Automated semen analysis by SQA Vision^®versus the manual approach-A prospective double-blind study

Abstract

Next to clinical investigations, the evaluation of male fertility relies mainly on detailed sperm analyses, for example, cell counting, motility, cell morphology and vitality testing. The manual creation of a spermiogram is time‐ and material‐consuming. Therefore, reliable high‐throughput systems that may be substituted for manual methods are urgently needed. The present study aimed to compare conventional sperm analysis performed as per WHO 5th guidelines and semen analysis performed with the SQA Vision® machine. SQA Vision® is a commercial device for automated sperm analysis. Data obtained independently by both methods were compared by statistical analyses using Bland–Altman plots and Passing–Bablok regression analyses. The analyses revealed that the results for sperm concentration and total motility were comparable. The agreement for progressive motility was poor, and there were clear deviations in the determination of normal sperm morphology. Passing–Bablok regression analyses and the consideration of the 95% confidence intervals pointed out systematic and proportional differences between the manual semen analysis and the automated approach.

Validation of LensHooke® X1 PRO and Computer-Assisted Semen Analyzer Compared with Laboratory-Based Manual Semen Analysis

“…Similarly, the total motility results for the IVOS CASA and the X1 PRO were comparable. Strong correlations were previously observed for sperm motility using different CASA systems [ 15 21 26 27 ]. This can be credited to the ease of marking and tracking sperm to count and follow its movement using computer algorithms.…”

Automation of human semen analysis using a novel artificial intelligence optical microscopic technology

“…Lammers et al (2014) showed that manual reading of total motility was higher than those of two automated systems in a trial of 250 human samples. Recently, a study analysing 100 human ejaculates also showed a proportional difference for total motility measurements with a slope higher than 1.2 between the manual method and a commercially available automated device, SQA-V (Engel, Grunewald, Schiller, & Paasch, 2019).…”

“…Engel and colleagues demonstrated systematic and proportional differences for progressive motility between the manual method and the SQA-V device with a large intercept (−18) and a slope higher than 1.2 as well as a low Spearman rank correlation coefficient (r = .86), indicating poor agreement between the two methods (Engel et al, 2019). This could be due to the fact that manual assessment of motility is subjective and generally overestimated because of the attraction of the eye to movement (Komori et al, 2006;Tomlinson et al, 2010).…”

The validity and reliability of computer-aided semen analyzers in performing semen analysis: a systematic review

“…Agarwal et al found statistically significant differences between results when using the LensHooke X1PRO device (P<0.001), although they reported a high positive correlation coefficient (r=0.93, P<0.01) (22). High correlation coefficients were also reported when the manual method was compared to a laboratory-based CASA system (r=0.97; P<0.0001) or a smartphone-based CASA analysis (r=0.59; P<0.001) (21) as well as SQA Vision (r=0.74; P<0.0001) (18).…”