Patent ID: 8515143

Claim:
An embryo quality evaluation assistance system for assisting quality evaluation of an embryo, comprising: an embryo observing apparatus having an image pickup unit that picks up images of the embryo; and a computer that transmits and receives data to and from the embryo observing apparatus, wherein the computer comprises: a time-series image storing unit that stores time-series images picked up by the embryo observing apparatus; an embryo image extracting unit that extracts an embryo image from the time-series image; and an active site extracting unit that compares an embryo image based on a first time-series image with an embryo image based on a second time-series image picked up before or after a predetermined time from a pickup time of the first time-series image, and extracts as an active site a set of pixels associated with corresponding pixels of the first and second time-series images when a difference between pixel values of the corresponding pixels is larger than a predetermined threshold value, wherein the image pickup unit picks up the time-series images while the embryo is visually contained in a visual field; and the embryo image extracting unit extracts candidate areas through binarization processing, executes labeling of the candidate areas by allocating a same identifying number to each set of linked candidate area pixels, calculates an area of each labeled candidate area and a size of a rectangle surrounding each labeled candidate area, and removes the labeled candidate area when an area of the rectangle surrounding the labeled candidate area is larger than a size that the embryo can have during a culturing period or when a circularity calculated from an aspect ratio of the rectangle is lower than a predetermined value.