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ABSTRACT: Background
A growing spectrum of applications for natural and synthetic polymers, whether in industry or for biomedical research, demands for fast and universally applicable tools to determine the mechanical properties of very diverse polymers. To date, determining these properties is the privilege of a limited circle of biophysicists and engineers with appropriate technical skills.Findings
Easyworm is a user-friendly software suite coded in MATLAB that simplifies the image analysis of individual polymeric chains and the extraction of the mechanical properties of these chains. Easyworm contains a comprehensive set of tools that, amongst others, allow the persistence length of single chains and the Young's modulus of elasticity to be calculated in multiple ways from images of polymers obtained by a variety of techniques (e.g. atomic force microscopy, electron, contrast-phase, or epifluorescence microscopy).Conclusions
Easyworm thus provides a simple and efficient tool for specialists and non-specialists alike to solve a common problem in (bio)polymer science. Stand-alone executables and shell scripts are provided along with source code for further development.
SUBMITTER: Lamour G
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4106204 | biostudies-literature | 2014
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Lamour Guillaume G Kirkegaard Julius B JB Li Hongbin H Knowles Tuomas Pj TP Gsponer Jörg J
Source code for biology and medicine 20140710
<h4>Background</h4>A growing spectrum of applications for natural and synthetic polymers, whether in industry or for biomedical research, demands for fast and universally applicable tools to determine the mechanical properties of very diverse polymers. To date, determining these properties is the privilege of a limited circle of biophysicists and engineers with appropriate technical skills.<h4>Findings</h4>Easyworm is a user-friendly software suite coded in MATLAB that simplifies the image analy ...[more]