Towards Modelling Locomotion using EMG Informed 3D Models: Application to Cerebral Palsy

This position paper neuromusculoskeletal models to understand and treat complex neurological disorders. Although applicable to a variety of neurological conditions we provide direct pipeline applicative examples in the context of cerebral palsy (CP). This paper highlights technologies in; (i) Patient-specific segmental rigid body models developed from Magnetic Resonance Imaging for use in inverse kinematics and inverse dynamics pipelines; (ii) Efficient population based approaches to derive skeletal models and muscle origins/insertions that are useful for population statistics and consistent creation of continuum models; (iii) Continuum muscle descriptions to account for complex muscle architecture including spatially varying material properties with muscle wrapping; (iv) Muscle and tendon properties specific to CP; and (v) Neural based electromyography-informed methods for muscle force prediction. This represents a novel modeling pipeline that couples for the first time electromyography extracted features of disrupted neuromuscular behavior with advanced numerical methods for modelling CP-specific musculoskeletal morphology and function. The translation of such pipeline to the clinical level will provide a new class of biomarkers that objectively describe the neuro-musculo-skeletal determinants of pathological locomotion and complement current clinical assessment techniques, which often rely on subjective judgment.