image credit: wellcomecollection.org A new artificial intelligence approach by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators can identify with a great degree of accuracy whether a 5-day-old, in vitro fertilized human embryo has a high potential to progress to a successful pregnancy. The technique, which analyzes time-lapse images of the early-stage embryos, could improve the success rate of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and minimize the risk of multiple pregnancies. Infertility is estimated to affect about 8 percent of women of child-bearing age. While IVF has helped millions give birth, the average success rate in the United States is approximately 45 percent. For the study, published April 4 in NPJ Digital Medicine, investigators used 12,000 photos of human embryos taken precisely 110 hours after fertilization to train an artificial intelligence algorithm to discriminate between poor and good embryo quality. To arrive at this designation, each embryo was first assigned a grade by embryol...