The OpenSim project and the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research (NCSRR) at Stanford invite you to join our next webinar, featuring Carmichael Ong from Stanford University. 

DETAILS 
Title: Predictive Simulations to Study the Plantarflexors in Gait Pathologies 
Speaker: Carmichael Ong , Stanford University
Time: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 10:00 am Pacific Daylight Time 
Registration: https://simtk.webex.com/simtk/onstage/g.php?MTID=e2563f4991602dbec542f9ef892fe7658

ABSTRACT 
The ankle plantarflexor muscles play an important role in human walking as they provide propulsion during the push-off phase. Deficits in these muscles, such as weakness and contracture, occur commonly in gait pathologies. While these deficits likely contribute to observed kinematic compensations, elucidating their role is difficult due to the often co-occurring biomechanical and neural deficits. Simulations in which kinematics are generated de novo, commonly known as predictive simulations, are well-suited to answer these types of questions as isolated deficits can be systematically introduced into a model. In this webinar, Ong will discuss a framework for predictive simulation, along with the model he and his team used, to generate realistic motions of walking at a wide range of speeds. Ong will then discuss how they systematically introduced plantarflexor weakness and contracture into their model and analyzed the resulting gait patterns. The model and results are provided at https://simtk.org/projects/pfdeficitsgait. The framework and workflow developed for this study can be extended to study other mechanisms of gait pathologies.