In connection to a recent post on the benefits of consistent annotation we invited readers to take a short survey on the use of annotations in their time-lapse software. Thanks to all of you who answered – here are the results.
The majority of respondents use annotations
Of the total 83 respondents from this anonymous email based survey, the majority (85,5%) are using annotations in their time-lapse software. The main reason for not using annotations is lack of knowledge.
Daily annotations most common
The majority of respondents (81,5%) annotate every day. The main reasons for daily annotations are:
- To keep updated on embryo development
- Make workflow simpler
- Ease workload on day of transfer
The remaining are annotating only on the day of transfer (9,2%) or when time permits, but always before transfer (9,2%).
Most common to annotate all embryos
Almost a quarter (22,4%) of the respondents only annotate a subset of embryos, where the majority state they only annotate embryos with good quality enough for transfer or cryo preservation. The rest of the respondents (77,6%) annotate all embryos.
Consistant annotation – using the same variable for all embryos
Almost all respondents (94,6%) claim to use the same annotation variable for all embryos.
Annotations are mostly used to select embryos for transfer and cryopreservation
In the survey there was an open question “What are your annotations used for”? Most answers showed that annotations are used to select the best embryo for transfer and for cryo preservation. Annotations are also used for data collection and to build models.
Who makes the decision of which embryo(s) to transfer?
In this survey, the decision on which embryo to transfer is taken by IVF professionals working in the lab, either embryologist or lab director/lab manager for the vast majority (89%) of cases. Other staff making the decisions are physicians/gynecologists (10%) and lab technician (1%).
KIDScore decision support tool comes with complete annotation strategy
KIDScore is a decision support tool that comes with a complete annotation strategy. The annotation strategy for KIDScore tells you exactly which parameters to annotate and how to annotate them and based on this the model assigns a score from 0 to 5 to reflect the implantation potential of each embryo within a cohort. Learn more about KIDScore in this movie or read more here.
Your answers made a difference
At Vitrolife we highly value feedback from customers and want to thank everyone who responded to this survey. As a thank you, we offered all respondents to donate money to UNICEF and we thank you for giving us this opportunity to help children in need.
Topics: Time-lapse, IVF community insights