Computational Biomechanics:

Human movement is the result of complex interaction between joint anatomy, passive soft-tissue restraint and active muscle force. When function of a joint is disrupted through injury or disease, the effect on quality of life can be significant, affecting the entire population range from older patients with debilitating osteoarthritis to young active sports people with soft-tissue injury or instability. Computational simulations can provide an ideal complement to clinical or cadaveric studies. Validated computational models may be used to great effect to compare clinical treatment options, optimize an implant design to best suit a patient population, or determine optimal surgical pathways on a subject-specific basis. These models facilitate prediction of muscle forces, joint loads, kinematics, stresses, and strains which are typically not feasible to obtain in vivo or in vitro. This seminar will focus on applications of finite element models in assisting implant design and surgical decisions. These include development of more fidelic lower-limb models which better represent the loads and motions encountered in a patient population, new methods for assessing the stability of knee replacement components, and subject-specific models developed to understand the anatomic predisposition of a patient to patellar dislocation and determine the optimal course of treatment to address the underlying anatomic abnormalities which facilitate injury.