This Android App Can Measure Sperm Counts

Coupled with fettle trackers and health apps, smartphones are a fount of wellness data, only one matter they can't do is determine your sperm count.

Researchers are hoping to change that with a image for an inexpensive device that attaches directly to your telephone, letting it analyze semen samples.

Sperm analyzing app The researchers, from Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, described their invention in a newspaper published in Science Translational Medicine this week. The battery-powered attachment, which was 3D printed using an Ultimaker two printer, contains an LED and lenses borrowed from CD and DVD drives. It's designed to hold a disposable microchip that contains the semen sample.

Once the sample is inserted, the attachment is fitted to the photographic camera lens of the smartphone, in this example a Motorola Moto X running Android vi.0. The app and so records records a serial of one-2d videos at 30fps, which it analyzes using image-detection algorithms that record the movement of sperm across the frames.

The full cost for the materials, co-ordinate to the New York Times, is less than $5, including $3.59 for the optical attachment and 86 cents for the chip that holds the semen sample. The researchers think the design'southward low price and ease of apply for anyone familiar with an Android telephone could help it gain traction in African countries, where admission to medical care is difficult and stigmas about male infertility persist.

"At that place are ovulation test kits for women, but so far nothing for men," Hadi Shafiee, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard, told the Times. "With this device at home, a homo can avoid the embarrassment and stress of providing a sample in a doc's part. This can exist the next pace."