State of the art and current limits of musculo-skeletal models for clinical applications

The prediction of musculo-tendon forces developed during daily living tasks is essential to assess movement control and joint reaction forces, and then provide insight to improve diagnosis and treatment follow-up of neurological and orthopedic disorders. Direct measurement of the musculo-tendon forces is hardly possible and the redundancy inherent in the musculo-skeletal system yields not enough equilibrium equations to compute these forces. Different methods have been proposed to overcome this problem, requiring numerous input parameters, most of them difficult or impossible to adjust to a specific subject. These methods will be exposed and their limits pointed out. Anyway, further development is needed in order that the model-based prediction of musculo-tendon forces can be used for clinical purposes.