The Effect of Different Methacrylation Amounts on Physical Properties of Gelatin Methacryloyl Biomaterials: Machine Learning Approach

Abstract

The rational design process for biomaterials is time-consuming. Machine learning (ML) is an efficient approach for reducing material synthesis and experimentation in terms of cost and time. Among the emerging biopolymers for tissue engineering applications, methacrylic anhydride (MA)-functionalized gelatin (GelMA), which was chosen as the model biomaterial for this study, has assumed a promising role owing to its excellent tunable properties and biocompatibility. The ML approach was used to determine the efficiency of the MA amounts selected for GelMA synthesis. In addition, the effect of different methacrylation amounts on the molecular structure of GelMA was indicated in terms of its physical properties. This modeling was performed to generate predictions based on 20 mL of MA. The prediction output was obtained as a result of four data models from the 20 mL MA column. First, data were collected with experimental applications for swelling and degradation ratios, and then the data processing phase was applied. The most suitable ML model, decision tree regression, was selected, and the results were interpreted graphically. The experimental results were compared with the ML results, and the efficiency of ML is shown in detail. The Mean Squared Error (MSE) value for degradation was calculated as 10.16, with a Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) of 3.1885, Mean Absolute Error (MAE) of 2.6667, and Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of 14.66%. For swelling, the MSE value was calculated to be 1821.25, with an RMSE of 3.1885, MAE of 2.6667, and MAPE of 14.66%. In future studies, it is anticipated that the performance of the model will improve with the expansion of the experimental dataset for swelling measurements.