Morphometry of normal and teratozoospermic canine sperm heads using an image analyzer: work in progress.

Combining the traditional morphologic evaluation of spermatozoa with computer assisted image analysis adds randomness, objectivity, repeatability and accuracy to morphometric measurements. We collected semen from 10 fertile, normospermic dogs aged 1 to 7 yr and from 3 teratozoospermic breed-matched dogs. Sperm head morphology was examined in Giemsa-stained smears by light microscopy, using a computer-assisted image analyzer and by transmission electron microscopy. We found significant variation in sperm head area, length, width and degree of roundness among normospermic individual dogs, indicating that it would be necessary to examine many more dogs before the size and shape of normal dog spermatozoa could be determined. The normospermic dogs were used as controls for the teratozoospermic cases. Case 1: A 2-yr-old subfertile Cavalier King Charles Spaniel had semen with small and narrow-based sperm heads and a proximal cytoplasmic droplet in most of the spermatozoa. With the image analysis system, sperm heads were shown to be smaller and more oval than in normospermic dogs. The variatons in size and shape were similar in magnitude to those of control dogs. An examined infertile half-brother had similar semen quality. Case 2: A 3-yr-old Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen with 2 unsuccesfull matings exhibited spermatozoa with severe abnormalities. Measured by image analyzer, sperm heads were irregular in shape and very small in area. One of the two littermates examined had semen of the same quality as the case dog. Case 3: A 3-yr-old fertile Golden Retriever had semen with giant sperm heads in about 50% of spermatozoa. Image analyzing results revealed 2 populations of different sized sperm heads. Giant heads consisted of 52.2% of all spermatozoa. The results of the study reported here suggest that the image analysis technique may be useful in evaluating structural changes in sperm morphology, supplementing visual assessment that is used in conventional methods.