ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a technology that is increasingly being incorporated into clinical IVF treatment to enhance outcomes for sub-fertile patients; time lapse imaging offers a less disturbed embryo culture environment than traditional incubation and selection methodologies, with the additional opportunity to time stamp and study more precisely in vitro developmental events, or “morphokinetics.” Its relationship to preimplantation genetic testing for aneuploidy (PGT-A), which enables inference of embryo ploidy following embryo biopsy, and the preferential selection of euploid embryos, is much discussed in the context of time lapse morphokinetics—being considered as a noninvasive alterative to PGT-A. Both technologies have been widely, but not exclusively, reported to effectively select embryos from a cohort with the highest chance of success, and hence, by preferential selection and transfer—reduce the time taken for patients to attain a live birth. This chapter considers whether there is an association between the developmental patterns and timings of the human preimplantation embryo in vitro, and its chromosomal complement, or ploidy, by reviewing reports in the literature and considering the biology of the human embryo. It also considers the synergies between these methods and possibilities for the future.
