Partnering With ImVitro To Increase Successful IVF Fertility Pregnancies by Leveraging Computer Vision & AI
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More than a dozen clinics across Europe are using EMBRYOLY routinely in their labs. This photo was taken at the Gen-Bio clinic, in Clermont Ferrand ©ImVitro
Infertility affects as many as 1 out of every 7 couples attempting to have a child. To overcome infertility challenges, many aspiring parents pursue in-vitro fertilization (IVF) – a process that involves inseminating an egg inside of a lab, then placing the fertilized embryo into a patient's uterus where the embryo will develop into a fetus and then hopefully a healthy baby.
As the most effective form of assisted reproductive technology, IVF has led to the birth of over 8 million babies across the world since 1978. However, IVF treatment can be expensive, time-consuming, and has had unacceptably low success rates to date. Too often, the first transferred embryo does not result in a successful pregnancy and patients have to try getting pregnant with another embryo.
The emergence of time-lapse technology brings automation to manual and extremely complex tasks for embryologists – developing embryos, monitoring them throughout their development, and selecting which one to transfer.
Since time-lapse incubators take images of embryos as they develop at set time intervals ranging from 5 to 20 minutes over the course of days and allow the captured images to be viewed as a video, there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage the power of deep learning algorithms to analyze valuable visual data to predict how embryos will develop, standardize the assessment of embryos, and help embryologists select which one has the highest chances of leading to pregnancy in a specific patient.
Here at LDV Capital, we invest in people building businesses powered by visual technologies. A majority of data humans analyze is visual so the majority of data AI will analyze will have to be visual in order to succeed. We thrive on collaborating with deep tech teams leveraging computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data. Founded in 2012, we are the only venture capital firm with this thesis.
Dr. Alexandra Boussommier, Founder and CEO at ImVitro
We are thrilled to partner with Dr. Alexandra Boussommier and the team at ImVitro, a company behind the B2B SaaS platform EMBRYOLY that applies computer vision and artificial intelligence to the IVF fertility imaging process. They are focused on increasing successful pregnancies, quality control and transparency along the entire IVF workflow for patients and improving clinics' productivity.
ImVitro’s beachhead market is the $25B Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) market where unfortunately ~70% of IVF cycles fail (see this recent report) and demand for IVF treatment is expected to exponentially increase over the next decade as infertility soars, more employers are providing fertility benefits, more individuals decide to become parents later in life, and AI-assisted technology helps improve outcomes.
Surprisingly, despite the many advancements in assisted reproductive care, IVF success rates have stagnated in the last 10 years. This realization motivated ImVitro’s team to develop a powerful way of evaluating embryos and open the door for personalized IVF treatments – one that takes into account the patient's medical history and helps embryologists choose which embryo would have the highest chances of leading to a live birth for that particular patient.
AI-powered SaaS platform EMBRYOLY analyzes and annotates videos from already-existing microscope technology within clinics’ labs. ©ImVitro
In July, ImVitro presented the results of their retrospective clinical trial at the European Society of Human Reproductive Society (ESHRE) 2022, the largest embryology conference in the world. Their first product, a CE-marked platform EMBRYOLY, was benchmarked against 13 IVF experts. As a result, it could enhance the success rates of IVF per cycle by at least 15%.
EMBRYOLY is already being used in over 10 clinics located in France and Spain. More than 1500 IVF cycles have now been processed by EMBRYOLY, leading to a growing number of ImVitro-assisted pregnancies
“ImVitro helps embryologists and patients at our clinic to navigate the complex process of IVF. It not only increases the efficiency of the work that we do but also provides much-needed transparency. Their AI-powered platform EMBRYOLY seamlessly connects to our technology stack and helps us make data-driven decisions about embryos that we observe in our lab which then lead to successful pregnancies,” says Dr. Xavier Pollet-Villard, Director of the Nataliance IVF and Andrology laboratory.
A screenshot of the AI-powered SaaS platform EMBRYOLY: results page. ©ImVitro
By leveraging deep learning algorithms, ImVitro’s platform provides predictions based on the patient’s medical profile and the development of the embryo as early as day 3 as well as automates such mundane tasks as annotating key morphological events as embryologists do today. The IVF fertility sector is in dire need of AI-powered tools to optimize decision-making by increasing quality control and transparency.
Since EMBRYOLY is integrated into leading time-lapse imaging machines (TLI) such as GERI and the Embryoscope, it saves embryologists a lot of time, allowing them to focus on providing the best environments for embryos to develop.
Alternative solutions only take into account the patient's age while ImVitro analyzes over 30 clinical data points to create a hybrid score that includes the patient's BMI, uterus receptivity, spermatozoa mobility, and more to improve accuracy and help personalize and standardize results and KPIs.
ImVitro’s team at their latest company-wide retreat in the countryside
ImVitro is a team of 12 experts in AI, medtech, and regulatory affairs led by Dr. Alexandra Boussommier (CEO), Hedaia Ghannam (Technical Architect), Mohamed Maskani Filali (Lead Machine Learning Engineer), and Ines D’Heygere (Operations Lead).
ImVitro is hiring several brilliant people to help them grow on the commercial and technical sides of their team. Check out their job openings.
Alexandra is a biomedical engineer trained in Switzerland, the UK and the US who has spent years doing research in laboratories, manipulating and observing tissues and cells through microscopes, and experiencing first-hand the lack of automation and quality control. She has authored or co-authored more than 10 publications in peer-reviewed journals and obtained prestigious fellowships (e.g. Cancer Research Institute, NYC; Marie Curie S&E fellowship, EU). After receiving a Marie Curie Fellowship that brought her back to Europe following her postdoc, she explored more immediate clinical needs revolving around cell culture and imaging, only to discover one of its most beautiful applications: in vitro fertilization or IVF, which consists of cultivating life!
“We at LDV Capital are thrilled to partner with Dr. Alexandra Boussommier and the brilliant team at ImVitro to bring EMBRYOLY to market across the globe so millions of people can increase their likelihood of having a successful pregnancy through the IVF Fertility process. ImVitro will deliver a leapfrog technical solution to the IVF fertility imaging process by leveraging computer vision and artificial intelligence which has been a core expertise of our LDV Capital firm since being founded in 2012,” said Evan Nisselson, Founder and General Partner at LDV Capital.
LDV Capital led their oversubscribed $2.5M seed round with participation from MMC, Tiny VC, Fly Ventures, Compound VC, and Kima Ventures. This financing will be used to add key hires across technical and sales teams, integrate into more clinics, and develop additional features to save clinicians’ time. See more details in Dan Taylor’s article, “Helping IVF clinics increase workflow and maximize success rates, ImVitro raises $2.5 million”.
This post was written in collaboration with Brian Derickson, an analyst at LDV Capital.
