Time-Lapse Embryo culture: A better understanding of embryo development and clinical application

Conventional embryo assessment is performed by removing embryos from incubators at least once a day. However, it is static and limited to specific time points, reducing the amount of information that could potentially be obtained. Fortunately, the time-lapse system is a powerful technology that enables to observe embryo development progression by image acquisition at recurrent time intervals, without interfering in the culture conditions. There are numerous studies that used time-lapse incubators, focusing on embryo kinetics, patient characteristics and clinical outcomes. This review aims to find agreements in the literature concerning embryo kinetics and patient characteristics: age, body mass index, smoking habit, polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis; as well as culture conditions that involved culture media and oxygen concentration. Furthermore, they showed differences according to ploidy status, direct/reverse cleavage, gender and the potential association between embryo collapse and clinical outcomes.