Tessera: Effect of embryo mosaicism on trophectoderm biopsies for PGT-A

Click 'New' to create a new embryo. The embryo will contain euploid (green) and aneuploid (grey) cells.

Every time you click 'New' a different randomly generated embryo will be shown.

Use the settings on the left to adjust the proportion of aneuploid cells in the embryo, and their dispersal (low dispersal means they are found mostly in clusters, high dispersal means individual cells are more likely). The blastocyst trophectoderm generated will be shown below with a histogram showing all possible biopsies for the embryo.

Generate a pool of embryos with random aneuploidies, and take a single biopsy from each. The biopsies to rank the embryos from best to worst, and select embryos for transfer. The chart shows the relationship between the embryos and the biopsies. Biopsies that were able to select the correct embryos are shown in green.

This model visualises the possible tropectoderm biopsies obtained from a blastocyst in Preimplantation Genetic Testing for Aneuploidy (PGT-A) during IVF.

It is intended to help demonstrate the impact that the proportion and distribution of aneuploid cells can have on the biopsies that are obtained, and show how a single biopsy may not accurately reflect the embryo from which it came.

Tessera was created by Dr Ben Skinner at the University of Essex

Download the source code and run tessera locally from https://github.com/bmskinner/tessera