Spinal Biomechanics
Iraj Dehghan Hamani; Navid Arjmand
Volume 11, Issue 4 , February 2018, , Pages 327-335
Abstract
Spinal diseases are prevalent and costly. Excessive mechanical loads on the spine play a crucial role in the etiology of back disorders. To estimate spinal loads one needs to calculate unknown muscle forces through either an optimization or EMG-driven approach. Both approaches involve several assumptions ...
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Spinal diseases are prevalent and costly. Excessive mechanical loads on the spine play a crucial role in the etiology of back disorders. To estimate spinal loads one needs to calculate unknown muscle forces through either an optimization or EMG-driven approach. Both approaches involve several assumptions and simplifications regarding anatomy of muscles, mechanical properties of the spinal tissues, and estimation of the muscle forces. An alternative approach is to estimate spinal loads through effect of muscle forces, i.e., kinematics generated by muscles rather than forces generated by muscles. The present study hence aims to estimate spinal loads using a detailed finite element (FE) model of the T12-S1 spine driven by kinematics obtained through upright x-ray imaging. For this, kinematics (angular and translational displacements) of the T12 through S1 vertebrae were first measured in vivo in three healthy individuals when performing flexion from relaxed upright posture. The measured kinematics were subsequently prescribed to the FE model to estimate load sharing among the joint structures. In agreement with the measured data, the L1-L2, L2-L3, L3-L4 and L4-L5 average intradiscal pressure was estimated to be ~2.6, ~2.8, ~2.1 and ~2 MPa in flexion, respectively.
Spinal Biomechanics
Yousef Mohammadi; Rasoul Abedi; Navid Arjmand; Gholamreza Ataei; Nasser Fatouraee
Volume 11, Issue 4 , February 2018, , Pages 351-363
Abstract
The growth of low back pain and disoreders are increasing in different societies. Furthermore,the direct in vivo measurement of spinal and muscle forces is so difficult. Hence, the use of musculoskeletal biomechanical models has been emerged applicably as a tool for calculating and estimating spinal ...
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The growth of low back pain and disoreders are increasing in different societies. Furthermore,the direct in vivo measurement of spinal and muscle forces is so difficult. Hence, the use of musculoskeletal biomechanical models has been emerged applicably as a tool for calculating and estimating spinal forces under various activities. Thus, the purpose of this study is to estimate the mentioned forces with different methods especially in lifting tasks. To this end, a six-joint model with eighteen degrees of freedom and 76 trunk muscle fascicles has been developed. Due to more number of unknowns (muscle forces) than equilibrium equations, the system is redundant and the problem is indeterminate to be solved. So the electromyography assisted optimization (EMGAO) approach is used for estimating muscle forces. Since foregoing EMG muscle forces do not satisfy equilibrium equations, correction coefficients have been used for satisfying equilibrium at all lumbar joint levels. According to results in an identical task, all of the approaches indicated substantial differences in correction coefficients for each muscle. Although the stability and muscle forces are different in various EMGAO methods, spinal compression and shear forces are closer to each other in these methods. For validation of results, the intradiscal pressure (IDP) at L4-L5 in various methods are in agreement with in vivo IDP value of an experimental test measurement so that both of them reported this quantity in the range of 0.3-1.8 (MPa).
Gait Analysis
Samane Moeini Sedeh; Navid Arjmand; Mohammad Ali Sanjari; Hamid Reza Mokhtarinia; Morteza Asgari; Mohammad Parnianpour
Volume 7, Issue 4 , June 2013, , Pages 333-340
Abstract
Stability is important to prevent falling during occupational and daily living activities. Control parameters such as direction of motion and external load can affect stability pattern. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the effect of the mentioned control parameters on stability. Time series ...
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Stability is important to prevent falling during occupational and daily living activities. Control parameters such as direction of motion and external load can affect stability pattern. The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the effect of the mentioned control parameters on stability. Time series of lumbar rotation angle in 19 healthy subjects were investigated. Each subject performed spine flexionextension in two different directions of symmetric (sagittal plane) and asymmetric (between sagittal and transverse planes), with two loading cases of 8 Kg weight and load free. To evaluate dynamic stability of repetitive movement, a nonlinear method of largest Lyapunov exponent has been used. After calculating maximum Lyapunov exponent from each of the experimental cases, results of analysis of variance showed a significant difference between symmetric and asymmetric directions (p=0.016). To interpret this result we can suggest higher recruitment of the internal and external oblique muscle groups and higher mechanical constraints in spine during asymmetric tasks. Mean comparison showed that movement in symmetric direction has more instability than the asymmetric case. Moreover, presence of load and interaction between direction and load did not significantly affect local dynamic stability.
