* Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is where a single sperm is injected directly into an egg. Its main usage as an expansion of IVF is to overcome male infertility problems, although it may also be used where eggs cannot easily be penetrated by sperm, and occasionally in conjunction with sperm donation. It can be used in teratozoospermia, since once the egg is fertilised abnormal sperm morphology does not appear to influence blastocyst development or blastocyst morphology.
* Additional methods of embryo profiling. For example, methods are emerging in making comprehensive analyses of up to entire genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes and metabolomes which may be used to score embryos by comparing the patterns with ones that have previously been found among embryos in successful versus unsuccessful pregnancies.
* Assisted zona hatching (AZH) can be performed shortly before the embryo is transferred to the uterus. A small opening is made in the outer layer surrounding the egg in order to help the embryo hatch out and aid in the implantation process of the growing embryo.
* In egg donation and embryo donation, the resultant embryo after fertilisation is inserted in another person than the one providing the eggs. These are resources for those with no eggs due to surgery, chemotherapy, or genetic causes; or with poor egg quality, previously unsuccessful IVF cycles or advanced maternal age. In the egg donor process, eggs are retrieved from a donors ovaries, fertilised in the laboratory with sperm, and the resulting healthy embryos are returned to the recipients uterus.
* In oocyte selection, the oocytes with optimal chances of live birth can be chosen. It can also be used as a means of preimplantation genetic screening.
* Embryo splitting can be used for twinning to increase the number of available embryos.
*Cytoplasmic transfer is where the cytoplasm from a donor egg is injected into an egg with compromised mitochondria. The resulting egg is then fertilised with sperm and introduced into a uterus, usually that of the person who provided the recipient egg and nuclear DNA. Cytoplasmic transfer was created to aid those who experience infertility due to deficient or damaged mitochondria, contained within an egg's cytoplasm.