Measurements of Boar Spermatozoa Motility Using PFG NMR Method

The evaluation of spermatozoa motility, viability and morphology is an essential parameter in the examination of sperm quality and in the establishment of correlations between sperm quality and fertility. Until now, assessment of sperm quality has been based on subjective evaluation of parameters, such as motility and viability, and on objective parameters, such as semen concentration and morphology abnormalities. When subjective optical microscopic evaluation was used in humans and animals, variations of 30 to 60% have been reported in the estimation of the motility parameters of the same ejaculates. To overcome this variability, different systems have been proposed such as turbidimetry, laser-Doppler spectroscopy, and photometric methods. Other accurate techniques, such as flow cytometry, which allows the evaluation of concentration, and cellulose-acetate/nitrate filter measure only a single semen parameter. The more recent track semen analysis system, based on individual spermatozoon evaluation, offers an accurate calculation of different semen parameters. Although some interesting results have already been obtained, many questions remain, which have to be answered to allow for further development in veterinary medicine, clinical fertility settings, physiological, and toxicology research activities. Pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance (PFG NMR) techniques have been presented demonstrating the potential to study flow and transport processes in complex systems. By PFG NMR, the molecular displacement can be measured that occurs during a time interval D, between two consecutive magnetic field gradient pulses. In this poster we present the results of PFG-NMR obtained for a number of samples of boar spermatozoa with varying motility and discuss whether this method can be useful for fast and reliable spermatozoa motility evaluation. (author)