Title: Alterations of generic musculoskeletal models to incorporate realistic knee joint and muscle geometry for biomechanical analyses during healthy gait: a narrative literature review

Authors: Shivangi Giri; Ravi Prakash Tewari

Addresses: Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad, Prayagraj, India ' Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad, Prayagraj, India

Abstract: The knee is an important weight-bearing 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) joint that is essential for stable locomotion. However, the majority of lower limb musculoskeletal (MSK) models only include one DOF and hence fail to represent the true biomechanics of the knee. For models with multi-DOF knee, anatomically realistic modelling of muscle architecture is crucial in representing the mechanical stability of the entire limb. The purpose of this narrative review, therefore, was to report state-of-the-art knowledge on the existing generic rigid-body MSK models that have incorporated: 1) multi-DOF knee; 2) multi-line characterisation of muscle geometry, to analyse normal healthy human gait. Fifteen studies accommodated multi-DOF knee joint, however majority of them retained the single-line oversimplified muscle geometry. Those that focused on better characterising muscle geometry (n = 8) used only single-DOF knee joints. Most importantly, this review showed that no generic MSK model exists that incorporates realistic representations of both knee and muscle volume.

Keywords: musculoskeletal modelling; knee; muscle redundancy; review; biomechanics.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBET.2024.142526

International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, 2024 Vol.46 No.3, pp.180 - 209

Received: 26 Apr 2022
Accepted: 02 Jan 2023
Published online: 06 Nov 2024 *

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