A forward-muscular inverse-skeletal dynamics framework for human musculoskeletal simulations

This study provides a forward-muscular inverse-skeletal dynamics framework for musculoskeletal simulations. The simulation framework works based on solving the muscle redundancy problem forward in time parallel to a torque tracking between the musculotendon net torques and joint moments from inverse dynamics. The proposed framework can be used by any musculoskeletal modeling software package; however, just to exemplify, here in this study it is wrapped around OpenSim and the optimization is done in MATLAB. The novel simulation framework was highly robust for repeated runs and produced relatively high correlations between predicted muscle excitations and experimental EMGs for level gait trials. This simulation framework represents an efficient and robust approach to predict muscle excitation, musculotendon unit force, and to estimate net joint torque.