Comparison of a swim-up technique with the Hamilton Thorn Motility Analyser for measurement of sperm velocity and motility

Abstract

A colorimeter-based swim-up (SU) technique was developed and compared with a Hamilton Thorn Motility Analyser (HTM) for the evaluation of ram semen. SU parameters (sperm velocity in microns s-1, proportion of rapidly moving spermatozoa, and motility index) were significantly correlated (r from 0.47 to 0.98, P from < 0.05 to < 0.001) with most HTM parameters in semen containing known proportions of motile and immotile spermatozoa and in semen that was cold shocked, aged, diluted-stored and frozen-thawed. There were, however, no significant correlations between sperm velocity and HTM parameters in the fresh semen studied, possibly because of the small number of observations (n = 21) and narrow range of semen quality (83 +/- 2% subjectively scored motility) available. It is concluded that the swim-up technique is a simple, cheap, objective and reliable means of measuring sperm velocity and motility in ram semen.