An extended dynamometer setup to improve the accuracy of knee joint moment assessment

This paper analyzes an extended dynamometry setup that aims at obtaining accurate knee joint moments. The main problem of the standard setup is the misalignment of the joint and the dynamometer axes of rotation due to nonrigid fixation, and the determination of the joint axis of rotation by palpation. The proposed approach 1) combines 6-D registration of the contact forces with 3-D motion capturing (which is a contribution to the design of the setup); 2) includes a functional axis of rotation in the model to describe the knee joint (which is a contribution to the modeling); and 3) calculates joint moments by a model-based 3-D inverse dynamic analysis. Through a sensitivity analysis, the influence of the accuracy of all model parameters is evaluated. Dynamics resulting from the extended setup are quantified, and are compared to those provided by the dynamometer. Maximal differences between the 3-D joint moment resulting from the inverse dynamics and measured by the dynamometer were 16.4 N ·m (16.9%) isokinetically and 18.3 N ·m (21.6%) isometrically. The calculated moment is most sensitive to the orientation and location of the axis of rotation. In conclusion, more accurate experimental joint moments are obtained using a model-based 3-D inverse dynamic approach that includes a good estimate of the pose of the joint axis.