Egg Freezing: Did I Freeze Enough? How AI Is Helping Patients Better Understand Egg Quality
There’s no question that since its inception in the 1980’s, egg freezing has transformed reproductive choices. For many people, it has created something previous generations never had: the opportunity for people to preserve fertility options before they are ready to build a family.
But freezing eggs has never been a guarantee, and for many patients, taking this proactive step still comes with a lot of uncertainty. After weeks of appointments, hormone injections, monitoring, and anticipation, most patients walk away with one important piece of information: the number of mature eggs frozen. For some, that number brings relief. For others, it opens the door to an entirely new set of questions - ones we hear all the time at pregnantish: Are these enough eggs for the family I imagine someday? Should I consider another cycle? What does this number actually tell me about my future chances of having a baby?
Feelings around how many eggs to freeze vary from patient to patient – one person may feel comfortable after one cycle, while another may choose to do several rounds, and another may be weighing whether the emotional, physical, and financial investment continues to make sense.
We know that for people without financial coverage, this decision carries a different weight.
The challenge is also that egg freezing is unique from many other areas of fertility care - patients are often making decisions years before they know the outcome, and therefore success is often measured years later. The eggs a patient retrieves today may not be thawed and used for five, ten, or even fifteen years!
Historically, doctors have helped patients navigate these decisions using the best available tools including age, ovarian reserve testing, number of mature eggs frozen, and large datasets showing average outcomes. But increasingly, fertility medicine is moving toward a more individualized question: What can we learn about the eggs our patients freeze? How can we help them make better informed choices at the time of fertility preservation? How many eggs will lead them to a better chance at a baby?
That’s where new technologies like VIOLET™ by Future Fertility are entering the conversation - using artificial intelligence to provide additional insights designed specifically for egg freezing patients.
Introducing VIOLET™: AI Designed Specifically for Egg Freezing Decisions
VIOLET™ was developed by Future Fertility to support a very specific moment in the fertility journey: after someone’s eggs are retrieved and frozen, but before they return to use them - when, traditionally, they would have little insight into future embryo development or pregnancy.
Future Fertility is a Toronto-based health technology company helping fertility patients and their care teams better understand egg quality during IVF and egg freezing. Using AI to analyze microscope images of oocytes, its tools provide information that goes beyond age-based estimates alone — supporting more informed conversations about embryo development, cycle outcomes, and future family-building goals.
Its technology includes MAGENTA™, which assesses egg quality during IVF, and VIOLET™, which was designed specifically for egg freezing patients by analyzing mature eggs after retrieval, before they're frozen. Developed using one of the world’s largest databases of oocyte images and associated reproductive outcomes, Future Fertility’s technology is used by more than 300 fertility clinics in 35+ countries.
For egg freezing patients, VIOLET™ analyzes images captured of each mature egg in the fertility clinic’s lab and creates a report that helps put their egg quality results into context. Instead of relying only on general statistics based on age and egg count, patients and clinicians can review egg quality information from that specific cycle and discuss whether the number and quality of eggs retrieved may support the patient’s future family-building goals.
Rather than replacing existing information - like age, egg count, or physician expertise - VIOLET™ enhances the decision making process by offering another layer of data-driven information. A patient’s VIOLET™ report can help support conversations around questions like:
whether someone feels comfortable with their current number of frozen eggs
whether another cycle may align with their goals
how they think about future family planning
Future Fertility’s AI technology has been trained and validated on more than 650,000 oocyte images and developed through collaborations with fertility clinics internationally. For patients who may not return to use their frozen eggs for years, the goal is to provide more insight at a time when they are actively making decisions.
Sample Patient VIOLET™ Report. Source: Future Fertility.
From Spain to New York: How One Patient Used More Information to Navigate Her Egg Freezing Journey
For Athena Isaac, a 38-year old professional woman who froze her eggs across multiple cycles and clinics, the question of egg quality wasn’t theoretical - it was something she experienced firsthand. Like many people exploring fertility preservation, she knew she wanted to freeze her eggs, but figuring out when, where, and how to take that step wasn’t simple. Throughout her journey, VIOLET™ represented something many fertility patients are searching for: more information to help navigate decisions about their future. She shares with us:
“I’d wanted to freeze my eggs for a long time, but let’s be honest: U.S. price tags are eye-watering. I couldn’t bring myself to drop a small fortune on what was, at the time, just a ‘maybe’ for my future. But at 38, my perspective shifted. I decided to finally prioritize it – right around the time I learned about high-quality, much more affordable clinics in Spain. That combination of deciding [freezing my eggs] mattered and finding a path I could actually afford finally got me off the fence.
Before heading overseas, a friend who was deep into embryo science mentioned an innovation called VIOLET™. I was fascinated, but adoption wasn’t widespread yet, and I ultimately chose a clinic based on the doctor and the price rather than the tech.”
But as Athena quickly learned, deciding to freeze her eggs was only the first decision. Once she was in the process, a new challenge emerged: understanding what her results actually meant for her future.
“The thing nobody tells you before you start injecting hormones into your stomach is that you have no idea what kind of path you’re on until you’re already walking it. You can guess based on your AMH levels and birth year, but you don’t actually know until you’re in the thick of it. Because the terrain was so unpredictable, I stopped fixating on a single, magical target number. Instead, I built my own personal dashboard – looking at the number of rounds I could physically and financially handle, the number of eggs I had frozen, and what I called my ‘effective eggs,’ where VIOLET™ came into play.
“It was only a few rounds later, when the clinic offered VIOLET™ as an add-on at the point of sale, that I jumped at the chance. I didn’t view it as a silver bullet, but rather as a ‘best supporting actor’ in my journey. It gave me a useful data point for decision-making and a sense of control in a process where you usually have very little. It was just nice to know, of the eggs I actually got, how they looked.” - Athena Isaac
For Athena, having access to more information didn’t mean eliminating uncertainty. Instead, she says it helped her better understand her own journey and participate more actively in the decisions ahead.
“Looking back, the real skill in egg freezing is goal-setting. The right metrics help you manage your expectations and tell you when it’s time to pivot. If your body refuses to follow the textbook, those numbers can be the tools you need to advocate for yourself, ask the hard questions, and get a second opinion.”
What Doctors See as the Future of Fertility Preservation
While patients like Athena are looking for more information about their frozen eggs, fertility specialists have also long been searching for better ways to answer one of the most common questions they hear after an egg retrieval: Did I freeze enough eggs?
For Dr. Sony Sierra, Fertility Specialist & Medical Director at EVOLVE Egg Freezing Clinic, the reason for exploring technologies like VIOLET™ was simple: egg quality has historically been one of fertility medicine’s biggest unknowns, and now it’s not.
She explains: “Egg quality has historically been one of the most difficult aspects of reproductive medicine to assess. While we have long been able to count eggs and estimate success rates based on age and ovarian reserve, we have had limited tools to provide patients with individualized information about the eggs they have actually frozen. VIOLET™ represents an opportunity to bring additional data and objectivity into that conversation.”
Historically, conversations with patients about the future of their frozen eggs have been largely based on statistics. Dr. Sierra explains, “Before VIOLET™, counselling relied primarily on large population-based datasets, such as those from CARTR in Canada and SART in the United States. We would estimate a patient’s likelihood of future success based on factors such as age at the time of egg freezing, ovarian reserve testing, and the total number of mature eggs frozen. However, these estimates were based on population averages rather than the characteristics of an individual’s eggs.
“Age remains one of the strongest predictors of egg quality and reproductive potential, but it does not tell the whole story. The VIOLET™ technology adds another layer of information that can complement, rather than replace, traditional counselling.” - Dr. Sony Sierra
And according to Dr. Sierra, having access to more individualized information can help patients navigate decisions around their fertility preservation goals: “For many patients, having more personalized information increases both understanding and confidence in their decision-making. Fertility preservation can feel uncertain because patients are making choices today based on events that may occur years in the future. While no technology can predict outcomes with certainty, additional information can help patients feel more informed, engaged, and in control of their reproductive planning.”
The Future of Egg Freezing Is More Personalized Patient Care
If there’s one thing we hear again and again from fertility patients, it’s that they want information that feels more personal to them - we hear it in the stories shared with us every day: patients are looking for more individualized guidance as they navigate some of the biggest decisions of their lives.
Looking ahead, Dr. Sierra believes technologies like VIOLET™ represent a larger shift toward more individualized fertility care.
“What feels different is the convergence of several factors: large-scale data collection, advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the rapid growth of fertility preservation worldwide. Historically, our ability to assess egg quality has been limited. Today, technologies like VIOLET™ can analyze subtle features that are difficult or impossible for the human eye to quantify. Combined with large outcome databases, these tools have the potential to uncover patterns that can improve counselling and prediction in ways that were not previously possible. We are entering an era where reproductive medicine is becoming increasingly data-driven and personalized.”
It’s been clear for decades now that egg freezing can give people something powerful: more options. But as many of us have learned and experienced firsthand, options come with more decisions. And decisions require information.
Though no technology can predict the future or guarantee an outcome, more personalized insights may help patients make decisions today with greater clarity about tomorrow. We believe that the future of fertility care is not just about preserving possibilities, but rather it’s about helping people better understand them.
Future Fertility is a Toronto-based health technology company helping patients be more informed throughout their IVF journey. Using VIOLET™, an AI-powered tool that analyzes images of each egg, patients can receive objective egg quality scores that are correlated with blastocyst development potential. This offers earlier, more individualized insight into how egg quality may shape IVF outcomes and informs future treatment planning. Future Fertility’s tools are used in over 300 clinics across 35+ countries; if you’re considering IVF, ask your clinic if it’s available as part of your care. See what a VIOLET™ egg quality report looks like and how AI can help you and your doctor get more insight from your IVF cycle.