Advances in the Neuromusculoskeletal Modeling of Injuries, Diseases, and Clinical Treatments

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Background

Computer modeling and simulation of the neuromusculoskeletal human system have been used to investigate central nervous system strategies that control movement, as well as the physical demands of different activities. The overarching goal of these efforts are to prevent injuries, evaluate pathologies, evaluate and improve treatments of movement impairments caused by various conditions such as stroke, osteoarthritis, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, limb amputation, and even cancer. These simulations provide useful surrogate approaches to estimate muscle activity during human motion, as the invasive nature of in vivo experimental measurements often make the collection of surface muscle electromyography (EMG) data quite challenging for many deep muscles. Additionally, the relation between muscle force and EMG can at times be inconsistent. Moreover, neuromusculoskeletal models can offer an objective prediction of post-treatment function, and allow for the identification of treatment designs that maximize functional outcome for the patient through numerical optimization.

Since Hill’s early muscle models were implemented over 50 years ago, computer modeling and simulation of muscle activity has been a well-studied topic that has significantly advanced injury prevention, pathology evaluation, treatment improvement for movement impairments, and assistive device design. However, only a few research groups have managed to generate and validate clinical predictions based on computational models. Obtaining new clinical success stories, which are cases in which the computational prediction of the treatment outcome is shown to be accurate, will serve to draw the attention of the medical community to this engineering tool and present it as a valid option to assist in the clinical treatment decision process. For this reason, the main goal of this Research Topic is to provide an exclusive collection of research and discussions aimed to enhance the current methodologies and techniques for developing neuromusculoskeletal models of diseases, injuries, diagnosis, rehabilitation, surgical interventions, and assistive aids. Our goal is to assemble a collection of cutting-edge communications, where the topics of interest include but are not limited to the following:

- Evaluation or prediction of disease impact, treatment or assistive device effects on muscle activity by using neuromusculoskeletal models
- EMG-driven neuromusculoskeletal modeling to control assistive or rehabilitation devices
- Advances in neuromusculoskeletal modeling to improve the accuracy and/or efficiency of muscle activity estimation

This Research Topic aims to attract Original Research, Methods, and Review papers from researchers in the field of neuromusculoskeletal modeling. We encourage the exchange of important research, instruction, ideas and information on all aspects of the rapidly expanding area of computer modeling and simulation to estimate muscle activity, with a particular focus on discussing the applications of these models for the evaluation of disease impact, diagnosis protocol, rehabilitation outcome, and surgical approaches.

Keywords: neuromusculoskeletal modeling, muscle forces, central nervous system, EMG-driven, spinal cord injury, spine deformities, stroke, Parkinson's disease, ACL, osteotomy, prosthetics, orthotics, assistive devices

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