Ligament Property Optimization Within a Virtual Biomechanical Knee

Specimen-specific modeling of the knee can be an effective tool for understanding knee mechanics [1–2]. It can also serve as a design tool for orthopaedic implant design through enhancing understanding of mechanics in the reconstructed knee [3], particularly when used in conjunction with instrumented components that record in vivo joint forces [4]. Techniques for developing specimen-specific computational geometric models of hard tissue and soft tissue are fairly commonplace, using imaging tools such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR) in conjunction with software tools for image processing. Determination of specimen-specific material properties relies on measuring kinematics of the tissue associated with a defined load, either in vivo or in vitro, selecting an appropriate material model, and estimating values of the parameters of the model that closely match the experimental data. The goal of this work was to utilize inverse finite element (FE) analysis to determine material parameters of ligaments in a specimen-specific model of the knee, using both local and global optimization algorithms.