This Device Lets You Scan Your Semen With Your Phone

Checking for male infertility might be as easy as whipping out your smartphone, according to a new study published Wednesday in Science Translational Medicine.

Instead of spending extra money and biding time in a doctor's office, you might be able to find out your male infertility results via a new semen analyzer from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. It finds abnormal semen samples according to sperm concentration and motility with about 98 percent accuracy.

"Current clinical tests are lab-based, time-consuming and subjective," study author Hadi Shafiee said in a statement. "This test is low-cost, quantitative, highly accurate and can analyze a video of an undiluted, unwashed semen sample in less than five seconds."

So, how does it work? You connect your smartphone to an optical attachment, i.e. your phone essentially becomes a microscope, reports The Verge. Next, your semen goes into a cup, you place a disposable microchip in the sample and put that into the optical attachment. A complementary app records the semen via video and reports results within five seconds.

Researchers examined 350 semen specimens at the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center in order to test the device, and more than half of said specimens were tested accurately by 10 untrained volunteers, reports The Verge. The publication also points out a similar FDA-approved device named the YO Home Sperm Test debuted earlier in 2017, though it uses other factors for male fertility testing.

The device is still a prototype, but researchers are looking to do more tests and are going to file for Food and Drug Administration approval. It's expected to cost $50, similar to YO, and to come out in two to three years pending approval, Shafiee, who is also a principal investigator in the Division of Engineering in Medicine and Renal Division of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told The Verge.

Other applications for the device include an alternative post-op appointment for vasectomy patients, as they could check on their own to see if the procedure worked, as well as a way for animal breeders to test a semen sample's virility. Shafiee also told The Verge a comparable device is in the works that could look for infectious diseases in blood and saliva.