Pictures of IVF und ICSI
Ultrasound-guided transvaginal egg collection in the woman under ultra-short anaesthesia.
Principle of ultrasound-guided embryo transfer.
Pictures from the IVF laboratory
The following pictures about the first moments of human life possess an unadorned aesthetics that hardly anyone can escape.
The human germ cells (gametes): a mature egg on the upper left which has been aspirated from the ovary (the circled polar body indicates that the egg is mature), on the right a zygote (fertilised egg) the next morning, exhibiting two bubbles (the so-called pronuclei with male and female chromosomes) ready to merge. During this fusion (called syngamy), male and female genetic material combine at random into a new human being.
On days two and three, the first cell divisions take place. The picture above shows an optically promising embryo at the stage of 10-11 cells on day three. From this point onward, the chromosomes in the embryo must start producing proteins in order to reach the next stage; in case of gross errors in chromosome number, the blastocyst development cannot occur.
On the fifth day, a cavity has formed inside the embryo. This tiny hollow sphere is called blastocyst. A first specialisation of the cells has taken place - the darker inner cell mass on the left will form the embryo, the outer layer (trophectoderm) the placenta.