Active for many years in the field of characterisation of fluid and granular leaks, the Hydraulics department of the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) unit of the UCL has developed recognised international expertise.  In 1998, the Louis de Waele prize, awarded annually by the FNRS to a researcher for the quality of his research in the civil engineering field, was awarded to Hervé Capart, then FNRS candidate within the CEE Unit.

Yves ZECH, Sandra SOARES FRAZAO, Laurent GOUTIERE,
Adrien COYETTE, Benoit SPINEWINE

His works related to the development of Voronoi digital imaging techniques for the characterisation of subtle leaks.  This technique belongs to the range of PTV (Particle Tracking Velocimetry) methods and makes it possible to reconstruct the individual paths of each particle present in an leak, whether fluid (the particles are markers injected into the leak) or granular (the grains of the leak are the particles themselves.  These Voronoi works have since been widely developed by Benoit Spinewine within the framework of a First-University research project financed by the Walloon Region (1999-2001), and in several doctoral theses and student works, thus making it possible to extend the field of application.

In 2004 a completely new field of application for these techniques, unexpected to say the least, came to light.   Dr. Ph. Beyne, laboratory physician of the CHR of Namur, tells us of a recurrent problem, for which none of the current solutions respond completely satisfactorily: the characterisation of the quality of a sample of human sperm through analysis of the paths of the spermatozoids observed under the microscope. This analysis is essential for medically assisted fertilisation: the results of this analysis guide the choice of the type of insemination and the selection of the samples, and participate in the diagnosis of conditions linked to male infertility.  This type of analysis is practised very frequently in Belgium (43,220 in 2006) in a large number of laboratories (over 120).  However, the methods currently used are diverse, manual, subjective, laborious, and hardly standardised.  Quality controls performed in the leading laboratories frequently show a dispersal of results greater than 100%.

Following this exchange a project, called Vitality, was established within the framework of the Waleo II programme of the Walloon Region (2006-2008). This project made it possible to develop a prototype version of the sperm analysis software, based on the Voronoi digital imaging techniques developed previously.  It involved three research teams from different fields: the Information Systems unit (ISYS) of the Louvain School of Management (A. Coyette, J. Vanderdonckt), the CEE Hydraulics department of the Ecole Polytechnique de Louvain (L. Goutière, Y. Zech) for the UCL, and the medically assisted procreation centre of the ULg (A. Boland, M. Dubois). The encouraging results of this Vitality project drove Laurent Goutière and Adrien Coyette to lodge a First Spin-Off financing application with the Walloon Region, and their application was accepted.

From October 2008, Adrien Coyette will be working on the First Spin-Off Vitality project for a period of two years.  With training in management sciences and IT, the purpose of his work will be twofold: firstly to finalise the prototype that was developed within the framework of the Waleo II project, and study other possible fields of application in the biomedical and veterinary field and also in the industrial field.  Secondly, he will also perform a thorough market study, so as to be able to constitute a spin-off company at the end of the financing from the Walloon Region.  This company will have the mission of developing knowledge in the field of sperm analysis and in the other relevant fields identified within the framework of this project.