Numerical predictions of hip joint and muscle forces during daily activities: A comparison of musculoskeletal models

Musculoskeletal loading plays an important role in pre-clinical evaluations of hip implants, in particular, bone ingrowth and bone remodelling. Joint force estimation using musculoskeletal models evolved as a viable alternative to in vivo measurement owing to the development of computational resources. This study investigated the efficiencies of four eminent open-source musculoskeletal models in order to determine the model that predicts the most accurate values of hip joint reaction and muscle forces during daily activities. Seven daily living activities of slow walking, normal walking, fast walking, sitting down, standing up, stair down and stair up were simulated in OpenSim using inverse dynamics method. Model predictions of joint kinematics, kinetics and muscle activation patterns were compared with published results. The estimated values of hip joint reaction force were found to corroborate well with in vivo measurements for each activity. Although the estimated values of hip joint reaction force were within a satisfactory range, overestimation of hip joint reaction force (75% BW of measured value) was observed during the late stance phase of walking cycles for all the models. In case of stair up, stair down, standing up and sitting down activities, the error in estimated values of hip joint reaction force were within ~20% BW of the measured value. Based on the results of our study, the London Lower Extremity Model predicted the most accurate value of hip joint reaction force and therefore can be used for applied musculoskeletal loading conditions for numerical investigations on hip implants.