A new app could help the process for infertile women trying to have a baby with IVF using donated eggs. The app will use facial recognition to help match the donor's face with the mother, therefore ensuring the baby will closely look like the mother.
Selfie App And Donated Eggs
The Spanish firm, Ovobank, claims that its computers study 100 points of each donor's face to help match the donor with the mother. Alberto Lale, manager at Ovobank, said that most patients choose egg donation for their treatment and would like for the children to look like as much as them.
Ovobank, which currently has over 4,000 eggs from donors, suggests that a computer algorithm would be best in choosing the right egg as it would be more accurate.
The app measures the face including the distance between the eyes, the size of the lips, and the length of the nose. The new service was announced at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology in Barcelona. The app will become available for people who are undergoing IVF at clinics based in Marbella and Malaga in Spain.
New Hope For Infertile People
The facility can also ship eggs to other collaborating clinics. Lale continued that many patients are interested in the app and expect the cost of the service to be around £90 or about $120. Lale elaborated that most patients would rather prefer anonymity to avoid having problems later in life.
Gillian Lockwood, director of Midland Fertility Services, claimed that in the United Kingdom, many clinics have always tried to match similar attributes of the donor to the mother. Lockwood continued that there has been a shortage of egg donors in the United Kingdom.
"On the one hand I can see the appeal for the couple of having the baby they 'would' have had if only she had fertile eggs, but UK philosophy about donation is that the child is entitled to know about the circumstances of their conception ( even if the information is very limited)," Lockwood said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, infertility is defined as a person's inability to get pregnant after one year or longer of unprotected sex.
Though infertility is common in women, it can affect men as well. In the United States, 6 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 44 years old are unable to get pregnant, and 12 percent of women in the same age group have trouble getting pregnant and carrying a child full-term.
