Fertdish: microfluidic sperm selection-in-a-dish for ICSI

The selection of viable sperm is critical for intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), an assisted reproductive technique. Existing conventional and microfluidic sperm selection methods, however, fail to select viable sperm and lack clinical applicability, respectively. Here, we present a clinically-applicable microfluidic platform, the FertDish, which improves upon the clinical ICSI petri dish by adding a two-layer film that includes an array of sperm-guiding micro-channels for one-step sperm selection. FertDish-selected sperm, from human donor semen samples, displayed considerable improvements in DNA quality when compared to raw semen. Notably, the FertDish outperforms conventional methods, and is readily applicable to the ICSI workflow.