AI-Powered System Locates Hidden Sperm, Enabling Pregnancies for Azoospermic Men

Penelope and Samuel's baby, expected to be the first boy born using the Star system, is due at the end of July 2026. The couple, who battled infertility for two and a half years, learned of the pregnancy in early November 2025 when Penelope received a call from her doctor while driving home from work in New Jersey.

Their success stemmed from the AI-powered Star system, which isolated eight sperm from Samuel's sample after testicular extraction surgery, allowing one embryo to develop into a full blastocyst.

Samuel had been diagnosed with Klinefelter syndrome, a genetic condition affecting males born with an extra X chromosome, often not identified until adulthood. Most individuals with Klinefelter syndrome produce little or no sperm in their ejaculate, known as azoospermia.

Samuel underwent hormone therapy for nine months before surgery at Cornell Medical Center, where specialists initially found no sperm under manual examination, prompting the sample's transfer to Columbia University for Star analysis.

The Star system, developed over five years by Columbia University, uses artificial intelligence to identify and locate hidden sperm in men with azoospermia. It employs microfluid chips with channels as thin as a human hair, through which the sperm sample flows and is scanned by an imager at 300 images per second.

A machine learning algorithm detects sperm cells in real-time with a sensitivity rating of 100%, meaning it can find a single sperm if present, and a robotic system extracts the cells within milliseconds.

Com reported that Zev Williams, director of Columbia University Fertility Center, conceived the idea for the Star system in 2020 after reading about AI used to find new stars in telescope data. 'The picture of the sky was very reminiscent of what we're looking for, and what we see in men who are told they have no sperm,' Williams said.

He noted that the system analyzes hundreds of images per second to detect rare sperm amid debris and cell fragments.

In tests, the Star system found 40 times more sperm than a manual search by a trained human technician. Based on the latest 175 patients, sperm was found in just under 30% of cases. A usual semen sample contains tens of millions of sperm per millilitre, but in azoospermic samples, only a single sperm might be present in the entire sample, or none at all.

The first baby born using the Star system arrived at the end of 2025 to a couple who had struggled with infertility for almost two decades. Since then, the technology has been used regularly at Columbia University Fertility Center, with a waiting list growing to hundreds from around the world.

Eric Forman, medical and laboratory director at Cornell Medical Center, supervised Samuel's procedure and said the tissue was processed in the andrology laboratory before running through the Star system.

Samuel was told he had a 20% chance of having a biological child. 'I was scared. Penelope shared the pregnancy news with him that evening in November 2025, recalling his emotional reaction: 'His face was just a wave of emotion.

Millions of men globally experience azoospermia. About 10% of infertile men have the condition, and 1% of all men are azoospermic. Infertility affects around one in every six people of reproductive age worldwide, with problems getting pregnant at least once in their lifetime, and male infertility contributes to up to 50% of cases.

Penelope described the pregnancy as feeling 'really real now, especially because I'm feeling movement,' after an anatomy scan showed positive results. The couple's journey involved injecting the isolated sperm into Penelope's eggs on the same day as her retrieval to maximize fertilization chances.