Cerebral palsy: Modeling and simulation
Physics-based simulations of walking have the potential to support clinical decision-making by predicting the functional outcome of treatments in terms of walking performance. Yet, before this gets materialized, we need to be able to model how mechanical and control impairments affect the walking pattern of children with cerebral palsy. In this project, we worked toward this goal by developing subject-specific models of mechanical (eg, altered muscle-tendon properties) and control (eg, spasticity) impairments affecting children with cerebral palsy. We then used simulations to evaluate the effect of treatments on the walking pattern of a specific child with cerebral palsy.
This work is covered in a series of papers with associated code:
- Methods to characterize altered muscle-tendon properties by optimizing muscle-tendon model parameters:
- Subject-specif model of muscle spasticity:
- Predictive simulations to predict the differential effects of motor control and musculoskeletal deficits on gait dysfunction in cerebral palsy:
This work was core to my Ph.D. thesis, which you can find here.