Objective Function Choice Influences Muscle Muscle Force Predictions During Human Walking

The knowledge of forces in muscles and joints inside the human body may help to improve rehabilitation for individual patients. However, the human body is complex and these forces are unmeasurable. Through the use of motion capture technology, 3D modeling, and computational methods in the field of biomechanics we are able to simulate motion by predicting these forces. One challenge to biomechanical simulation is that we do not understand the strategy humans use to coordinate their muscles to walk. The purpose of this study was to examine muscle coordination strategies used to simulate walking. Different muscle coordination strategies are attained in a simulation by altering a quantity called the objective function. Simulation output data can be compared between strategies and to experimental data to determine the strategy that best represents human muscle coordination. In the future this knowledge may be applied to rehabilitation techniques: changing them from generalized to patient-specific.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/1798/thumbnail.jp