The preservation of living cells by freezing. The technique is used to store human eggs for in vitro fertilization, sperm for artificial insemination, or plasma and blood belonging to rare blood groups.
Maintenance at very low temperatures of the viability of tissues or organs that have been excised from the body.
n. preservation of tissues by freezing. Cryopreservation of embryos, egg cells, or sperm may be employed as part of *in vitro fertilization procedures, for example if there are medical reasons for delaying the pregnancy. See also vitrification.
a facility that collects, freezes, and stores human sperm for future use in *artificial insemination (see cryopreservation). Sperm is donated by men who relinquish legal rights to any future child, and donors’ identities are generally unknown to recipients. In some cases, men store their sperm for their own future use if they are to undergo a medical treatment that might leave them sterile.... sperm bank