Prediction of hip joint load and translation using musculoskeletal modelling with force-dependent kinematics and experimental validation

Abstract

Musculoskeletal lower limb models are widely used to predict the resultant contact force in the hip joint as a non-invasive alternative to instrumented implants. Previous musculoskeletal models based on rigid body assumptions treated the hip joint as an ideal sphere with only three rotational degrees of freedom. An musculoskeletal model that considered force-dependent kinematics with three additional translational degrees of freedom was developed and validated in this study by comparing it with a previous experimental measurement. A 32-mm femoral head against a polyethylene cup was considered in the musculoskeletal model for calculating the contact forces. The changes in the main modelling parameters were found to have little influence on the hip joint forces (relative deviation of peak value < 10 BW%, mean trial deviation < 20 BW%). The centre of the hip joint translation was more sensitive to the changes in the main modelling parameters, especially muscle recruitment type (relative deviation of peak value < 20%, mean trial deviation < 0.02 mm). The predicted hip contact forces showed consistent profiles, compared with the experimental measurements, except in the lateral–medial direction. The ratio-average analysis, based on the Bland–Altman’s plots, showed better limits of agreement in climbing stairs (mean limits of agreement: −2.0 to 6.3 in walking, mean limits of agreement: −0.5 to 3.1 in climbing stairs). Better agreement of the predicted hip contact forces was also found during the stance phase. The force-dependent kinematics approach underestimated the maximum hip contact force by a mean value of 6.68 ± 1.75% BW compared with the experimental measurements. The predicted maximum translations of the hip joint centres were 0.125 ± 0.03 mm in level walking and 0.123 ± 0.005 mm in climbing stairs.

Alterations of musculoskeletal models for a more accurate estimation of lower limb joint contact forces during normal gait: A systematic review

“…The number lines of action were also related to the generic musculoskeletal model used in each study and ranged between 11 (Lin et al, 2010) and 163 (Chen et al, 2014;Modenese et al, 2013Modenese et al, , 2011Moissenet et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2015). In all the selected studies, the muscle paths were enhanced by via points only (15) or with (9) the use of wrapping surfaces.…”

“…The computation of joint contact forces was mainly based on 1-point or 2-point rigid contact models (respectively 10 and 5 out of 24 studies). However, several studies introduced deformable structures by using a force dependent kinematics method (Chen et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2015), a deformable contact with viscous damping (Guess et al, 2014), a rigid body spring model (Hast and Piazza, 2013), or a surrogate contact modelling (Lin et al, 2010). Some other studies are based on regression equations converting the varus-valgus moment to medial and lateral tibiofemoral contact forces (Lundberg et al, 2013(Lundberg et al, , 2012, or on prosthesis calibration (Serrancoli et al, 2016;Walter et al, 2014).…”

“…Alterations of the skeletal and joint models concern kinematics and/or dynamics, and can be divided in nine sub-group: markers' placement (Lund et al, 2015;Navacchia et al, 2016), number of DoFs (Dumas et al, 2012;Lundberg et al, 2013), knee alignment (Lerner et al, 2015;Navacchia et al, 2016;Thelen et al, 2014), femoral anteversion (Heller et al, 2001), scaling strategy (Chen et al, 2014;Lund et al, 2015), medial-lateral tibiofemoral contact forces ratio (Lundberg et al, 2013), inertial parameters (Navacchia et al, 2016), contact points (Lerner et al, 2015;Manal and Buchanan, 2013), contact stiffness (Chen et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2015), and joint passive stiffness (Dumas et al, 2012;Lundberg et al, 2013).…”

Introduction to Force-Dependent Kinematics: Theory and Application to Mandible Modeling

“…Andersen et al [19] introduced the Force-dependent Kinematics (FDK) method, which has been implemented into the AnyBody Modeling System (AMS) and subsequently applied by several, independent research groups to study, among others, knees [20], hips [21], shoulders [22] and spine [23]. The FDK methodology augments an inverse dynamic analysis method with the possibility of not only computing muscle and joint reaction forces but also joint kinematics, taking into account complex joint geometry and elasticity of the surrounding soft tissues.…”

Biomechanical Models of the Hip – a Validation Study Based on 10 CT-Datasets

“…Biomechanical models of the hip have the potential to predict the resultant joint force R and its orientation Ɵ (Zhang et al, 2015). Knowledge of hip joint mechanics is important for a variety of reasons e.g.…”