Infertile Couples Hope New Technology Helps Select Most Successful Embryos

The video is about 30 seconds long. Dawn Guhe has watched it at least 100 times. It captures the first five to six days of development of two of her now-frozen embryos that could be her best chance at having a baby after struggling for six years with infertility.

“I just put it in my laptop and push play and replay it over and over,” said Guhe, 35, of south St. Louis County. “It’s amazing watching this thing grow that could potentially be a person one day. It’s just nutty.”

The video is made possible by an EmbryoScope, a technology promising to improve the selection of embryos most likely to result in pregnancy and birth. The Missouri Center for Reproductive Medicine in Chesterfield installed the machine in March and is the only fertility center in the region (closest is Chicago) with the $150,000 technology.

More than 60,000 babies are born each year in the U.S. using in vitro fertilization, where an egg is fertilized outside the body and implanted in the uterus. Usually multiple eggs from a...