An Analysis of Biomechanical Characteristics of Gait Based on the Musculoskeletal Model

Abstract

Cerebral apoplexy usually causes dyskinesia, which will prevent the limb motor functions of patients. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is a useful method for rehabilitation of dyskinesia, which has been widely applied in clinic. However, the effectivity of FES is sometimes limited due to several factors including the stimulation position and muscle fatigue. It has been reported that gait analysis might be helpful for parameter selection in FES, and thus has application potential in dyskinesia rehabilitation. In this study, we proposed a gait analysis method based on the musculoskeletal modeling, and a software named OpenSim was used to establish a walking model of human lower extremity. The characteristics of both joint kinematics and muscle force were analyzed. The results confirmed the coordination among the muscles of lower extremities during walking, and there existed an activation sequence for those muscles. In addition, the relationship between muscle force and gait phase was also indicated in the results. This preliminary work may provide a new approach for gait analysis, which could be applied to improve the FES performance in future work for dyskinesia rehabilitation.