TOMSK,
Aug 13 – RIA Tomsk. Employees of Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU)
and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) have developed software that
analyzes scaffolds – a polymer base for growing new organs and tissues; this is
the first publicly available software for the study of polymer and hybrid
materials, the press service of the university said on Tuesday.
According
to the university, scaffolds – are promising area in biomedicine. They are
materials made of thin polymer threads interwoven with each other. They are
placed at the site of a bone defect, for example, fracture, as a framework for
new bone cells. New bone tissue grows through the scaffold and fills the fracture
site. When the bone is completely restored, the polymer dissolves in the body.
"Quanfima
software analyzes the structure of polymer frameworks, which serve as the basis
for the growth of new organs and tissues. Unlike existing analogs, this is the
first publicly available software which analyzes different types of
biomaterials: polymer scaffolds or hybrid polymer scaffolds, which contain the
microdispersed inorganic phase", – is said in the statement.
According
to one of the authors of the study, the Director of the TPU Research Center for
Physical Materials Science and Composite Materials Roman Surmenev, composite
three-dimensional scaffolds, represented by various materials with a fibrous
structure or containing various additives, have a positive effect on the
regeneration of various tissues.
The need
for software development, according to polytechnicians, is due to the lack of a
free software product for the analysis of fibers in terms of their orientation
in space relative to the selected basis and size.
© Маргарита Волоковых
"A
number of foreign scientific groups have commercial products which
functionality is similar to the program we developed, but they are not in the
public domain", – the scientist is quoted in the message.
International
tandem
According
to the university, the work was carried out in the framework of the
international scientific group. Software was created on the basis of the
programming language Python by employee of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Roman Shkarin. Polytechnicians in turn, provided model materials for research –
polymer scaffold and hybrid polymer scaffold.
The
Quanfima software package, according to the developers, is based on several
widely distributed products designed for data analysis, for example, NumPy,
SciPy, scikit-image, VIGRA, Pandas and Statsmodels. In the new software
scientists have tried to combine their capabilities.
"At
present, Quanfima software ("Quantitative Analysis of Fibrous
Materials") has been developed and can be used for its intended purpose.
The product can be downloaded by clicking the link. Our program allows to
analyze parameters that are key for any biomaterial when used in regenerative
medicine", – Surmenev summarized.