Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Dynamic Simulation And Analysis Of Gait Modification For Treating Knee Osteoarthritis, Taylor Elyse Schlotman

Doctoral Dissertations

Roughly 47.5 million people in the US have a disability, with 8.6 million reporting arthritis as their main cause of disability, making arthritis the leading cause of physical disability. With decreased mortality rates and a large, aging baby boomer generation, there will be more adults living with chronic musculoskeletal conditions causing disabilities that limit walking. Since walking ability is directly related to an individual’s independence at home and in the community, losing this ability is a major setback for patients with arthritis. Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is the most prevalent form of arthritis affecting approximately 27 million adults and accounts for …

Multiscale Modeling Of Toxoplasma Gondii, Adam Michael Sullivan

Doctoral Dissertations

Toxoplasma gondii is a potentially deadly parasite that uses a very unique way of manipulating the cell and immune systems. To investigate the mechanics of how the parasite spreads within hosts, several interwoven topics related to the study of within-host dynamics of Toxoplasma gondii are presented here. Understanding the complicated methods of how the parasite grows, dies, invades, replicates, and evades the host immune response is the critical aim of this independent research. Understanding the processes of acute and chronic infection are studied independently, followed by modeling the two processes in the same model. Finally, the dynamic models are simulated …

Comparative Study On Posture And Its Influences On Horizontal Ground Reaction Forces Generated By Muscles: Implications For Crouch Gait, Hoa Xuan Hoang

Masters Theses

Crouch gait decreases walking efficiency due to the increased knee and hip flexion during the stance phase of gait. Crouch gait is generally considered to be disadvantageous for patients with cerebral palsy; however, a crouched posture may afford biomechanical advantages that lead some patients to adopt a crouch gait.

To investigate one possible advantage of crouch gait, a musculoskeletal model created in OpenSim was placed in 15 different postures from upright to severe crouch during initial, middle, and final stance of the gait cycle. A series of optimizations were performed for each posture to maximize ground reaction forces for the …