Human Lower Extremity Design: Architecture of Hip, Knee, and Ankle Muscles

Models of the musculoskeletal system depend on accurate muscle architecture inputs. To date, models of the human lower extremity are based on the muscle architecture of either two (Friederich and Brand, 1990) or three (Wickiewicz et al., 1983) cadaveric specimens of unknown age, gender, and size. As models become more sophisticated, accurate depiction of interand intra-muscular architectural features is becoming more important (Blemker and Delp 2006). The purpose of this project was to generate a high resolution human lower extremity muscle architecture database and compare these data to the most widely used data set currently in use.