A Hand-Held Platform for Boar Sperm Viability Diagnosis Based on Smartphone

The swine fever virus seriously affects pork production, and to improve pork production, pig breeding efficiency needs to be improved, and the detection of boar sperm activity is an important part of the pig breeding process. Traditional laboratory testing methods rely on bulky testing equipment, such as phase-contrast microscopes, high-speed cameras, and computers, which limit the testing scenarios. To solve the above problems, in this paper, a microfluidic chip was designed to simulate sperm in the oviduct with a channel thickness of 20 um, which can only accommodate sperm for two-dimensional movement. A miniature microscope system which can be used in combination with a smartphone is designed that is only the size of the palm of the hand and has a magnification of about 38 times. An intelligent diagnostic app was developed using Java language, which can automatically identify and track boar sperm with a recognition rate of 96.08% and an average tracking rate of 86%. The results show that the proposed smartphone-based hand-held platform can effectively replace the traditional microscope compound computer to diagnose sperm activity. In contrast, the platform is smaller, easier to use and is not limited by the usage scenarios.

Automated summary

The swine fever virus seriously affects pork production. To improve pig breeding efficiency and diagnose sperm activity, researchers designed a microfluidic chip and a miniature microscope system, which can be used with smartphones. An intelligent diagnostic app allows for the automatic identification and tracking of boar sperm. The proposed smartphone-based hand-held platform effectively replaces the traditional microscope compound computer and offers smaller size, ease of use, and flexibility in testing scenarios.