In a new study, scientists at Stanford University were able to predict 93% of the time which fertilized eggs would survive to reach the developmental stage known as a blastocyst. A blastocyst contains about 70 to 100 cells.

"It completely surprised me that we could predict embryonic fate so well and so early," said Renee Reijo Pera, director of Stanford's Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education and one of the authors of a paper published in Nature Biotechnology.

The new findings could help in-vitro fertilization experts when they select embryos for implantation. For their study, researchers examined 242 frozen 1-cell human embryos. The embryos came from the Reproductive Medicine Center at the University of Minnesota. To get a sense of how small an early embryo is, check out this video of a three-day-old human embryo. In the video cells are being removed from the embryo in order to check for genetic abnormalities.