Mounir Zok

Musculoskeletal system modelling for the evaluation of motor disability

Musculoskeletal system models aimed at assessing activity limitation and impairment of a specific individual in the domain of mobility are presented. A thorough biomechanical analysis of selected motor tasks would be effective but awkward to apply in clinical practice by reason of the complexity of both instrumentation and experimental protocols. Therefore, different methods are proposed that entail the measurement of a minimum number of biomechanical variables. However, since data thus obtained do not necessarily lend themselves to straightforward interpretation, they are fed to models of the musculoskeletal system that embody the invariant aspects of both the modelled system and the specific motor task (minimum measured-input models). Two different sets of mathematical models are presented that aim at assessing activity limitation and establishing a relationship between this limitation and impairment, respectively.