Biodegradable polymers have seen a wider range of application and higher demand in the past several years. Though many studies have been conducted on the properties of these polymers, most focus on formulating new polymer composites for commercialization purposes. How the polymers behave in an actual working/physiological environment, such as in-vivo, stressed conditions, is not fully understood.

Our goal is to construct a system that could easily measure the degradation behavior of biopolymers under stress in vivo-like conditions. This system could help in the development of biopolymers for medical use by allowing researchers to inspect their material's behavior without an actual in-vivo test. Meanwhile, the data could be used to construct a mathematical model to study the coupling effect between chemical factors and mechanical stress during degradation.

Our system measures the length change of polymers under stress with image analysis techniques. The change in length is a reflection of the polymer's Young's modulus, which could be considered a marker of the polymer's degradation extent.