an open source lower limb model: hip joint validation

musculoskeletal lower limb models have been shown to be able to predict hip contact forces (hcfs) that are comparable to in vivo measurements obtained from instrumented prostheses. however, the muscle recruitment predicted by these models does not necessarily compare well to measured electromyographic (emg) signals. in order to verify if it is possible to accurately estimate hcfs from muscle force patterns consistent with emg measurements, a lower limb model based on a published anatomical dataset ( klein horsman et al., 2007 . clinical biomechanics. 22, 239–247) has been implemented in the open source software opensim. a cycle-to-cycle hip joint validation was conducted against hcfs recorded during gait and stair climbing trials of four arthroplasty patients ( bergmann et al., 2001 . journal of biomechanics. 34, 859–871). hip joint muscle tensions were estimated by minimizing a polynomial function of the muscle forces. the resulting muscle activation patterns obtained by assessing multiple powers of the objective function were compared against emg profiles from the literature. calculated hcfs denoted a tendency to monotonically increase their magnitude when raising the power of the objective function; the best estimation obtained from muscle forces consistent with experimental emg profiles was found when a quadratic objective function was minimized (average overestimation at experimental peak frame: 10.1% for walking, 7.8% for stair climbing).