Matt DeMers from Stanford University will describe and demonstrate the techniques used to estimate loads on joints using the OpenSim software package.
Matt DeMers will discuss and demonstrate tools for estimating joint reaction loads in OpenSim. Since physiological joint reaction loads are dominated by the action of muscles, Matt will first describe how Static Optimization is used to estimate muscle forces from motion capture data. Then, he will discuss how the Joint Reaction analysis uses these muscle estimates to calculate resultant loads at the joints. Matt will next step through an exercise in OpenSim, applying these tools to an example trial of walking gait. He will use this practical segment to highlight some common pitfalls, troubleshooting approaches, and general best practices for estimating muscle and joint loads during gait.
WEBINAR HANDOUTS AND EXAMPLE FILES: You can download the checklists for Static Optimization (http://opensim.stanford.edu/downloads/ChecklistStaticOptimization.pdf) and Joint Reactions (http://opensim.stanford.edu/downloads/ChecklistJointReaction.pdf) that Matt discussed during the webinar to find out more about using these tools for your own research. You can download the example files at Simtk.org (https://simtk.org/project/xml/downloads.xml?group_id=91).
