Background Science
This case study provides the life scientist with an opportunity to process imaging data of human embryos, and use the tools of scientific visualization to evaluate those embryos. The graphic at right shows the basic cycle of the maturation of an cell that undergoes in vitro production, or IVP. The following text description comes from Dr. Jerry Wu on the web at Taurus Studio:
Immature oocytes are aspirated from the follicles of abbatoir-derived ovaries and placed into a maturation mediad containing hormones for 48h. This not only allows chromosomal maturation from first meoitic prophase to second meiotic metaphase, resulting in the extrusion of the first polar body, but also allows cytoplasmic matuation involving principally the redistribution of cortical granules around the oocyte periphery with are important in the block to polyspermy and in increase in cumulus and ooctye interactions. After a successful contact between the oocyte and spermatozoa, the then called zygote will undergo a number of cleavages during the first 5 days of development. From about 3 days post fertilisation, the embryo starts to compact at which time tight junctions begin to form between blastomeres resulting in a more compact embryo. Morphologically this means that it becomes more difficult to see individual cells. During the process of compaction, the embryo is called a morula. As aresult of the formation of tight junctions, the embryo forms inner and outer cell types. This is a prerequisite for the process of blastocoel formation, which takes place at day 5-6 post fertilisation. Due to the active transport of sodium passing through the outer cell layer, an ion gradient is formed, leading to the osmotic accumulation of fluid. This results in the formation of the blastocoel cavity just beneath the outer layer of cells. Blastocoel formation normally starts on one side of the embryo and the resulting developmental stage is known as an early blastocyst. However, in some porcine embryos, several blastocoel cavities develop simultaneously and therefore morphological evaluation of such an embryo becomes more difficult.
Objectives of the Case Study
In this case study, you will use Easy-Viz to render and analyze a digitized image of embryo cells, with the goal of being able to evaluate the stage of an individual embryo in the dataset.
About the dataset
The datasets is available for download from this site. The dataset is 800x600 in size, and is a two-dimensional (2D) dataset.