Virtual Patient to Assess Prosthetic Devices

In this paper we propose a digital model of the patient around which the prosthetic devices, in particular for lower limb, can be designed. The patient’s model is defined at different level of details, depending on the task to be accomplished. Three main tools are used to create the biomechanical model: a general-purpose human modeling system, medical images of the residual limb (obtained for example from Magnetic Resonance Imaging-MRI) and an ad hoc SW module for the automatic reconstruction of the residual limb model. To create the patient’s virtual human we adopted LifeMOD™, a biomechanical simulation package based on MSC ADAMS solver. Starting from a default virtual human, it is possible to generate a customized model modifying anthropometric data. We considered two reference avatars, one for transfemoral amputee and another one for transtibial amputee, which have to be customized for each specific patient. To characterize the amputee’s avatar following data are necessary: (1) patient’s anthropometric data and (2) digital model of the lower limb. This means that the biomechanical model of the amputee is realized in two steps: the first concerns avatar’s dimensioning and the latter residual limb linking. The patient avatar can be used both to design some specific components of the prosthesis and to virtually test it. Some examples will be shown in the paper as well as results reached so far.