Picture-perfect Eva, the first baby of time-lapse image IVF

The first woman to conceive using a breakthrough IVF technique has given birth to a baby girl.
Baby Eva, the first baby conceived using new IVF technique, the Early Embryo Viability Assessment (Eeva) test, with mother Susan Walker-Dempster and father David DempsterBaby Eva, the first baby conceived using new IVF technique, the Early Embryo Viability Assessment (Eeva) test, with mother Susan Walker-Dempster and father David Dempster
Baby Eva, the first baby conceived using new IVF technique, the Early Embryo Viability Assessment (Eeva) test, with mother Susan Walker-Dempster and father David Dempster

Eva was born in Glasgow on Tuesday thanks to the cutting-edge early embryo viability assessment (Eeva).

The three-day-old visited staff at the Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine (GCRM) with her parents, Susan Walker-Dempster and David Dempster.

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The clinic’s medical director, Dr Marco Gaudoin, described Eeva as “probably the most important development in IVF in the past five years”.

Eeva uses time-lapse imaging to monitor embryos while they are being incubated, and then uses computer software to select the best embryos at low risk of defects.

Pictures taken at five-minute intervals by the computer tell embryologists which embryos are best and most likely to deliver a full pregnancy.

In standard IVF, embryos are removed from the incubator once a day to be checked under the microscope.

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The Eeva system is similar to time-lapse imaging used by other fertility clinics, but it produces images every five minutes as opposed to every 10 to 20 minutes and the results are analysed by computer rather than a clinician.

The first baby to be born through the Eeva process arrived to delighted parents Ruth Cater and John Traverse in Liverpool late last month, but the girl was a premature birth.

The Dempsters, who are celebrating the birth of their first child together, were the first to conceive under the technique in September last year even though they did not know the full details of the Eeva process.

The couple told only their parents that they were using the new treatment, which was developed at Stanford University in the US.

The Dempsters had always planned to call their baby Eva if it was a girl and said she was not named after the new IVF treatment.

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