Want to test your sperm count? There’s an app for that- Study

A new smartphone-aided semen analyzer could make male fertility testing a little less ball-busting, Harvard researchers found in a recent study.

The at-home technology — still in the development phase — gives users a 98% accurate read on sperm count, concentration, motility (movement) and velocity, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine

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That means men might soon skip the mortifying, costly trip to the lab — and simply load their swimmers into a disposable microchip, insert the chip into a magnifying optical attachment on the phone, and wait just five seconds for a user-friendly app to capture video, analyze and spit out results.

The study used the smartphone contraption to analyze 350 semen samples obtained from a fertility clinic, comparing the stats with those produced from the standard computer-assisted semen analysis (CASA) used in labs.

“The work suggests that the integration of microfluidics, optical sensing accessories, and advances in consumer electronics, particularly smartphone capabilities, can make remote semen quality testing accessible to people in both developed and developing countries who have access to smartphones,” the study authors wrote.

The yet-to-be-FDA approved device, unlike CASA, can’t measure sperm size and shape (aka morphology) — but it certainly underspends the prevailing method, which can ratchet up to tens of thousands of dollars.

The total cost to make the device is a mere $4.45: $3.59 for the optical attachment, 86 cents for the microchip.

The smartphone app could also simplify the process of vasectomy patients’ follow-up semen analysis, for which compliance has traditionally been “extremely poor,” according to the study.

Between 2.5% and 12% of men worldwide — or an estimated 30 million — are infertile, a 2015 study found.

“We developed an automated smartphone-based diagnostic assay with the potential to make male fertility testing as accessible, easy, fast, and private as pregnancy tests,” the Harvard authors wrote.