Optimization and muscle synergy approaches for studying muscle redundancy during walking
The human body is an over-actuated multibody system, as each joint degree of freedom can be controlled by more than one muscle. Usually, optimization techniques are used to solve the muscle force sharing problem, that is, finding out how the resultant joint torque is shared among the muscles spannin...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2015 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) |
| Repositorio: | UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/95705 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2117/95705 https://dx.doi.org/10.5821/dissertation-2117-95705 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Músculs -- Mobilitat -- Models matemàtics Músculs -- Ferides i lesions -- Models matemàtics Optimització matemàtica Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica |
| Sumario: | The human body is an over-actuated multibody system, as each joint degree of freedom can be controlled by more than one muscle. Usually, optimization techniques are used to solve the muscle force sharing problem, that is, finding out how the resultant joint torque is shared among the muscles spanning that joint. The reduction of muscle force redundancy can be achieved in several ways. Although the strategy followed by the central nervous system (CNS) to activate the muscles is not completely clear, one of the most used hypotheses to overcome this redundancy is to consider that the CNS minimizes a physiological variable. In the first study presented in this thesis, the solution to the muscle force sharing problem was approached by minimizing the sum of squared normalized muscle forces. For this purpose, a weighted cost function was designed to evaluate which muscles were more penalized in a subject with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) deficiency during walking. The results showed that the cost function that best fitted normalized electromyography signals with muscle activations did not treat all muscles equally. Another way to reduce muscle redundancy is using the idea that muscles are activated synergistically when performing a task. In the second study, a muscle synergy analysis was carried out to compare the muscle activation information at two levels: onset-offset activation patterns and muscle synergy components of a sample of 18 ACL-deficient subjects and a sample of 10 healthy subjects. Some differences were found at both levels, what suggests that ACL-deficient subjects alter the muscle activations of their injured leg to stabilize the joint. Finally, in the third study, muscle synergies were used in a two-step optimization method to predict physiologically consistent muscle and knee contact forces, while calibrating muscle parameters. In the outer level, muscle parameters were calibrated; while, in the inner level, muscle activations were calculated using the current muscle parameters. The results showed that a set of muscle parameters were able to reproduce knee contact forces with high accuracy when knee contact forces were used during the calibration process. This study shows the main differences when these forces are available for calibrating muscle parameters and when they are not. The most important differences in the muscle parameter calibration affected lateral muscles. Therefore, this fact suggests that trials where lateral muscles play a more important role should be used to obtain a better calibration when no contact forces are available. |
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