The impact of thigh and shank marker quantity on lower extremity kinematics using a constrained model

Musculoskeletal models are commonly used to quantify joint motions and loads during human motion. Constraining joint kinematics simplifies these models but the implications of the placement and quantity of markers used during data acquisition remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to establish the effects of marker placement and quantity on lower extremity kinematics calculated using a constrained-kinematic model. We hypothesized that a constrained-kinematic model would produce lower-extremity kinematics errors that correlated with the number of tracking markers removed from the thigh and shank.

Healthy-young adults (N = 10) walked on a treadmill at slow, moderate, and fast speeds while skin-mounted markers were tracked using motion capture. Lower extremity kinematics were calculated for 256 combinations of leg and shank markers to establish the implications of marker placement and quantity on joint kinematics. Marker combinations that yielded differences greater than 5 degrees were tested with paired t-tests and the relationship between number of markers and kinematic errors were modeled with polynomials to determine goodness of fit (R²).

Sagittal joint and hip coronal kinematics errors were smaller than documented errors caused by soft-tissue artifact, which tends to be approximately 5 degrees, when excluding thigh and shank markers. Joint angle and center kinematic errors negatively correlated with the number of markers included in the analyses (R² > 0.97) and typically showed the greatest error reductions when two markers were included on the thigh or shank segments. Further, we demonstrated that a simplified marker set that included markers on the pelvis, lateral knee condyle, lateral malleolus, and shoes produced kinematics that strongly agreed with the traditional marker set that included 3 tracking markers for each segment.

Constrained-kinematic models are resilient to marker placement and quantity, which has implications on study design and post-processing workflows.