  The morphology of the sperm head has often been correlated with the outcome
of in vitro fertilization (IVF), and has been shown to be the sole parameter in
semen of value in predicting the success of intracytoplasmic sperm injection
(ICSI) and intracytoplasmic morphologically selected sperm injection (IMSI). In
this paper, we have studied whether Digital Holographic (DH) microscopy may be
useful to obtain quantitative data on human sperm head structure and compared
this technique to high power digitally enhanced Nomarski microscope. The main
advantage of DH is that a high resolution 3-D quantitative sample imaging may
be obtained thorugh numerical refocusing at different object planes without any
mechanical scanning. We show that DH can furnish useful information on the
dimensions and structure of human spermatozoo, that cannot be revealed by
conventional phase contrast microscopy. In fact, in this paper DH has been used
to evaluate volume and indicate precise location of vacuoles, thus suggesting
its use as an additional useful prognostic quantitative tool in assisted
reproduction technology (ART).
