BARCODE: high throughput screening and analysis of soft active materials

TL;DR

BARCODE is a software tool that automates the analysis of microscopy videos to study dynamic, non-equilibrium materials, making screening faster and more accessible.

Contribution

BARCODE introduces a novel, open-access method for high throughput screening of soft active materials using a barcode-like fingerprint of performance metrics.

Findings

BARCODE reduces data dimensionality and size while providing rich, multiparametric outputs.

The software accelerates screening and analysis of cytoskeleton networks and cell monolayers.

BARCODE reveals unexpected correlations and enables broad data access and sharing.

Abstract

Active, responsive, non-equilibrium materials–at the forefront of materials engineering–offer dynamical restructuring, mobility and other complex life-like properties. Yet, this enhanced functionality comes with significant amplification of the size and complexity of the datasets needed to characterize their properties, thereby challenging conventional approaches to analysis. To meet this need, we present BARCODE: Biomaterial Activity Readouts to Categorize, Optimize, Design and Engineer, an open-access software that automates high throughput screening of microscopy video data to enable non-equilibrium material optimization and discovery. BARCODE produces a unique fingerprint or ‘barcode’ of performance metrics that visually and quantitatively encodes dynamic material properties with minimal file size. Using three complementary material-agnostic analysis branches, BARCODE significantly reduces data dimensionality and size, while providing rich, multiparametric outputs and rapid tractable characterization of activity and structure. We analyze a series of datasets of cytoskeleton networks and cell monolayers to demonstrate BARCODE’s abilities to accelerate and streamline screening and analysis, reveal unexpected correlations and emergence, and enable broad non-expert data access, comparison, and sharing.

BARCODE is an open-access software that automates high throughput screening of microscopy video data to produce a unique fingerprint or ‘barcode’ of performance metrics that enables optimization and accelerates discovery of soft, active materials.

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