Dr. Ilse Jonkers
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Title:  Human Movement Simulations for novel applications in neurorehabilitation

Abstract: For the past several years, computer assisted movement analysis has been used as an evaluation tool for gait, in clinical and research applications. The description of gait kinematics, kinetics (using integrated 3D Motion Capture) and muscle activation (using surface electromyography), quantitatively documents the (aberrant) gait pattern. The analysis of the inter-relationships of data in combination with the clinical findings helps clinicians in understanding the abnormal movement pattern and contributes to the clinical decision making or allows a fundamental analysis of factors that constitute the specific gait dysfunction. During the past decade, engineering applications have been introduced to assist the study of human gait, more specifically to allow causal relationships to be identified and treatment simulations to be performed. This presentation focuses on the potential and future prospect of integrating advanced biomechanical analysis techniques, more specific dynamic simulations of motion and musculoskeletal modeling, to enhance the understanding of gait control (e.g. effect of reduced gait speed and muscle weakness), the effect of specific dysfunctions (e.g. CP, stroke, osteoarthritis) and its potential in the design of exoskeleton devices.

Short CV:

Prof. Jonkers’ research topics are: Three-dimensional movement analysis of lower and upper limb – integrated gait analysis – surface EMG during gross motor function (gait, sprinting, cycling, reaching), Kinematic modeling of the lower limb (including the foot-ankle complex) as well as upper limb, Musculoskeletal modeling of the lower and upper limb, Inverse dynamic simulations of gait (including calculation of individual muscle forces using static optimization), Muscle activation driven forward simulation of gait, Medical imaging techniques based, personalized musculoskeletal modeling of the lower limb, Robot assisted rehabilitation.