The Human Reproduction Unit of the General Hospital of Valencia has been elected to participate in an international project in which they will test the leading technology of MIRI® TL Incubator for IVF. This project will take place in four European hospitals, one of which is the Spanish ‘’General Hospital of Valencia’’, the only Spanish one included in the project.
As reported by the Government in a statement, the incubator has two "key elements" that makes it different from other embryo culture systems. First, is that the unit works with low oxygen pressures improving the cells’ development, and second is its time lapse system which allows them to take images every five minutes and generate a video of the whole evolution of each embryo as images are digitally stored.
Conventionally, the embryos are being removed from an incubator once a day and check their evolution under a microscope. This is a very critical step since the environmental condition could be changed instantly which may induce risks to the embryo development. Meanwhile, with the MIRI® Time-Lapse Incubator, images can be captured without causing any disturbance to the embryo. The temperature and pH are not altered while morphology is being displayed. Another advantage is the 6 incubation chamber, each allows individual cultivation of 14 embryos, thus can cultivate a total of 84 embryos in one run.
The company who is leading this project and is testing MIRI® TL technology has chosen The General Hospital of Valencia due to the ‘’accredited experience’’ of the embryologist Irene Cuevas, Laboratory Manager in the Human Reproduction Unit. She has undertaken important projects for the development of high technology tools in this matter.
Cuevas stated, “Now, we will be able to know not only the rate of loss of events, we will know the whole process from the time that the embryo was placed inside the incubator until the time of transfer. Furthermore, we can now analyze which of the embryos registers the optimum features according to morphology and morphogenetics. This means a great advancement in embryology”.
Juan Gilabert Estelles, Manager of the Maternal and Child Clinical Area and Director of the Medical & Surgery Simulation Area in the General Hospital, stated that this technology will allow the Hospital to become a key reference for the study of the evolution of embryos as well as the best place to work for specialists in this field.
