The mechanical properties of hydrogels, as well as native and engineered tissues are key parameters frequently assessed in biomaterial science and tissue engineering research. However, a lack of standardized methods and user-independent data analysis has impacted the research community for many decades and contributes to poor reproducibility and comparability of datasets, representing a significant issue often neglected in publications. In this study, we provide a software package, MechAnalyze, facilitating the standardized and automated analysis of force-displacement data generated in unconfined compression tests. Using comparative studies of datasets analyzed manually and with MechAnalyze, we demonstrate that the software reliably determines the compressive moduli, failure stress and failure strain of hydrogels, as well as engineered and native tissues, while providing an intuitive user interface that requires minimal user input. MechAnalyze provides a fast and user-independent data analysis method and advances process standardization, reproducibility, and comparability of data for the mechanical characterization of biomaterials as well as native and engineered tissues.

中文翻译：

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MechAnalyze：压缩测试分析标准化和自动化的算法

水凝胶以及天然和工程组织的机械性能是生物材料科学和组织工程研究中经常评估的关键参数。然而，几十年来，缺乏标准化方法和独立于用户的数据分析已经影响了研究界，并导致数据集的可重复性和可比性较差，这是出版物中经常被忽视的一个重要问题。在这项研究中，我们提供了一个软件包MechAnalyze，促进了无侧限压缩测试中生成的力-位移数据的标准化和自动化分析。使用手动和MechAnalyze分析的数据集的比较研究，我们证明该软件能够可靠地确定水凝胶以及工程和天然组织的压缩模量、失效应力和失效应变，同时提供了一个直观的用户界面，需要最少的用户输入。MechAnalyze提供了一种快速且独立于用户的数据分析方法，并促进了生物材料以及天然和工程组织的机械表征数据的过程标准化、再现性和可比性。