Learn · Academic track
For embryologists in their first years.
A structured course by practising embryologists — the parts of the job a degree doesn't teach and a busy lab has no time to explain. Free, self-paced, with real images and honest assessment.
The curriculum
Ten modules, in the order a lab actually needs them.
- 01
The lab, end to end
Workflow from egg collection to transfer: what happens, why the order matters, and where errors enter. Witnessing and identity as the first skill, not the last.
- 02
Oocyte morphology
Maturity (GV, MI, MII), cumulus assessment, and the dysmorphisms — vacuoles, SER clusters, refractile bodies, dark cytoplasm — with what the evidence says each does and doesn't predict.
- 03
Fertilisation & PN scoring
Normal and abnormal fertilisation, pronuclear size, alignment and timing, 1PN and 3PN decisions, failed fertilisation and rescue ICSI.
- 04
Cleavage-stage embryos
Cell number by day, fragmentation, symmetry, multinucleation, compaction. Day-3 grading systems and where they disagree.
- 05
Blastocysts & Gardner grading
Expansion, inner cell mass, trophectoderm, hatching — and the difference between a grade and a prognosis. Includes a calibration exercise.
- 06
Cryopreservation
Vitrification and warming: the chemistry in plain terms, timing discipline, loading volume, the plunge, survival assessment and re-expansion.
- 07
Micromanipulation
ICSI step by step — oocyte orientation, membrane breakage, degeneration and how to reduce it — plus the principles of biopsy and assisted hatching.
- 08
The culture system
Media, oil, dishes, gas, incubators: what each contributes, how each fails, and how to prove your system is behaving.
- 09
Quality: KPIs, QC and CAPA
Which indicators to track and why, benchmarks and their limits, daily QC that actually protects embryos, and how to investigate and document a dip.
- 10
Ethics, consent and records
Consent for storage and disposition, traceability, incident disclosure, and the professional judgement no protocol covers.
How it will work
Learn, then prove it.
Read and watch
Each module is a short read built around real images from the atlas — the ones our community submits, credited to them.
Calibrate
Grade the same image sets the modules teach. See your agreement with the consensus, and with your own lab.
Be assessed
A short, honest assessment per module. Complete all ten and receive a certificate from Medical Interventions.
Your progress lives in your account. Create one now and we'll open the track to you first.
Why we're building this
Most embryologists learn the craft standing next to someone busier than they are. It works — and it also means technique, judgement and quality habits vary enormously between labs, which is exactly what shows up later in the numbers.
This track is the teaching side of the same idea as our free tools: give the profession what makes labs better, and the rest follows. Nothing here replaces supervised training or your lab's own SOPs; it gives you the reasoning behind them.
Want a module sooner, or one we haven't listed? Tell us — the order is set by what people ask for.