Abstract
BackgroundNeuromusculoskeletal modeling and simulation enable investigation of the neuromusculoskeletal system and its role in human movement dynamics. These methods are progressively introduced into daily clinical practice. However, a major factor limiting this translation is the lack of robust tools for the pre-processing of experimental movement data for their use in neuromusculoskeletal modeling software.ResultsThis paper presents MOtoNMS (matlab MOtion data elaboration TOolbox for NeuroMusculoSkeletal applications), a toolbox freely available to the community, that aims to fill this lack. MOtoNMS processes experimental data from different motion analysis devices and generates input data for neuromusculoskeletal modeling and simulation software, such as OpenSim and CEINMS (Calibrated EMG-Informed NMS Modelling Toolbox). MOtoNMS implements commonly required processing steps and its generic architecture simplifies the integration of new user-defined processing components. MOtoNMS allows users to setup their laboratory configurations and processing procedures through user-friendly graphical interfaces, without requiring advanced computer skills. Finally, configuration choices can be stored enabling the full reproduction of the processing steps. MOtoNMS is released under GNU General Public License and it is available at the SimTK website and from the GitHub repository. Motion data collected at four institutions demonstrate that, despite differences in laboratory instrumentation and procedures, MOtoNMS succeeds in processing data and producing consistent inputs for OpenSim and CEINMS.ConclusionsMOtoNMS fills the gap between motion analysis and neuromusculoskeletal modeling and simulation. Its support to several devices, a complete implementation of the pre-processing procedures, its simple extensibility, the available user interfaces, and its free availability can boost the translation of neuromusculoskeletal methods in daily and clinical practice.
Highlights
Neuromusculoskeletal modeling and simulation enable investigation of the neuromusculoskeletal system and its role in human movement dynamics
The MOtoNMS toolbox is implemented in MATLAB (The MathWorks, USA) and is intended to be accessible to a wide spectrum of users, from researchers to clinicians, who are interested in pre-processing experimental motion data to be used in neuromusculoskeletal simulations
The four gait laboratories are characterized by different instrumentations and setup (Table 1): (1) three motion capture systems: BTS, Vicon, and Qualysis; (2) three types of force plate (FP) [23], requiring different computation for plates moments and Center of Pressure (CoP); (3) four different setups for the global reference system, and FP positions and orientations along the walkway, resulting in different rotations from each FP reference system to the global one; (4) different configurations of analog channels; and (5) marker and EMG protocols dependent on each laboratory routine analysis
Summary
Neuromusculoskeletal modeling and simulation enable investigation of the neuromusculoskeletal system and its role in human movement dynamics. Neuromusculoskeletal modeling and dynamics simulation have recently emerged as powerful tools to establish the causal relation between the neuromusculoskeletal system function and the observed movement. They estimate human internal variables, such as neural signals and muscle dynamics, that could not be derived by experimental measures and conventional motion analysis [1,2,3,4,5]. Before the recorded raw data can be used as input for the simulation softwares, several pre-processing steps are required depending on the objective of the study [15, 16]. The integrated and pre-processed motion data must be stored using the file format of the chosen simulation software
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