Abstract

Background and Objectives: The human knee joint is complex, and understanding its kinematicsis important in the treatment of knee pathologies. Computational modeling is useful in medicine, biomedical engineering and other health sciences. Various methods have been developed to simulate the movement of joints and to pose computational anthropomorphic models. It is common to model the flexion-extension of the knee joint as planar rotation. Here, we propose a method to incorporate animation techniques into a truly 3D model of the knee joint from clinically derived scan data.

Methods: In this pilot study, we obtained the MRI-derived skeletal data of the lower limbs from BodyParts3D website. We also created in-house, the models of the cartilages, menisci and muscles. All models were imported into an open-source animation software, Blender. We developed techniques to identify the functional axes in the knee joint and their incorporation into the model. The same datawas also modeled with conventional planar rotations. We evaluated the models with bone collision and muscle contraction.

Results: Our anatomy-driven method minimized the collision of skeletal bones during posing and the muscle volume was conserved to within 0.01% of its original value.

Conclusion: We successfully exploited the simplicity of Blender and implemented a method to model the articulation of the human knee joint. This pilot study highlighted the ease of application and quantified its errors. Our technique is more anatomically and biomechanically accurate than conventional animation modeling.

Keywords: Knee joint; Biomechanical Phenomena; Kinematics; Three-Dimensional methods; Phantoms