An in-vitro study of the passive kinematic behavior of the human knee-joint

The development of a good quantitative concept, a model of passive human knee-joint behavior is the overall purpose of the present investigation. The approach is to obtain accurate and complete kinematic description of knee-joint behavior in an adequate number of specimens with a variety of external loading configurations, and simulate this behavior in a mathematical model, thereby optimizing the model characteristics to obtain adequate agreement in individual cases. The most important properties of the knee, as for instance joint surface geometry and ligament configurations are measured in the experimental specimen and used as input parameters of the model. Once the model is validated in this fashion, it can be applied for extensive parametric analyses to investigate the significance of joint structures, the effects of lesions and the consequences of operative interventions. The theoretical and numerical formulation of the mathematical model used in this case has been published earlier. The present paper reports purely on the first step of the investigation, the experimentally obtained freedom-of-motion characteristics of four knee-joint specimens. [8 Refs; In English