Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
Modeling and Simulating Virtual
Anatomical Humans
Forough MadehKhaksar, Zhiping Luo, Nicolas Pronost and Arjan Egges
6.1 Introduction
This chapter presents human musculoskeletal modeling and simulation as
a challenging field that lies between biomechanics and computer animation. One of
the main goals of computer animation research is to develop algorithms and systems
that produce plausible motion. On the other hand, the main challenge of biomechan-
ics is investigating the influence of internal and external forces and stimulators on
the biological behavior of different tissues. By combining the two approaches, it is
possible to produce real-time animation of a user's avatar under different activities
and to simulate the related biological effects of that activity. In this chapter we review
the challenges and issues of modeling, simulating, and animating virtual anatomical
humans, as well as an overview of the benefits and limitations of such systems.
The main advantage of using virtual anatomical models is the capability to study
the biomechanical effects of a variety of different activities that real humans perform.
The virtual world allows us to visualize these activities. Because of the use of virtual
models and simulations, these studies can be done without spending a lot of money
on measuring equipment, and without presenting any hazard to human subjects.
The biggest challenge in achieving this lies in the conflict between the real-time
nature of computer animation and the time-consuming computations required in
biomechanics. This chapter serves as a starting point for research into addressing
this conflict, by providing an overview of the differences and similarities between
the two fields.
Modeling and simulating the human body has been extensively researched in the
last decades. For example, recently, large consortia investigated new technologies
around virtual representations of the human body [
1
] and the multi-scale biological
data visualization of physiological human articulation [
2
]. Individual labs also take
