Musculoskeletal model of osseointegrated transfemoral amputees in OpenSim.

Abstract

This study presents a generic OpenSim musculoskeletal model of people with an osseointegrated unilateral transfemoral amputation wearing a generic prosthesis. The model, which consists of seventy-six musculotendon units and two ideal actuators at the knee and ankle joints of the prosthesis, is tested by designing an optimal control strategy that guarantees the tracking of experimental amputee data during level-ground walking while finding the actuators' torques and minimizing the muscle forces. The model can be made subject-specific and, as such, is able to reproduce the kinematics and dynamics of both healthy and amputee subjects. The model provides a tool to analyze the biomechanics of level-ground walking and to understand the contribution of the muscles and of the prosthesis' actuators. The proposed OpenSim musculoskeletal model is released as support material to this study.