Oct 15, 2011

Instructional Course at AACPDM

The NCSRR led a hands on session entitled, "Simulation of Human Movement and Gait Pathology - An Introduction to OpenSim for the Clinician" at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine.

Course Materials:

You can download PDFs of the course handouts and lecture slides.

Purpose:

Computer simulation has emerged as a powerful method to understand the dynamics of human movement and evaluate gait disorders. This course will provide a hands-on introduction to computer simulation that is accessible to clinicians of all backgrounds. Participants will learn about the capabilities and limitations of computer simulation and receive hands-on instruction about how to use OpenSim, a freely available software package for simulating movement.

Target Audience:

Clinicians who want to learn how computer simulation can be used to answer clinical questions about movement disorders. Participants will be asked to bring a laptop computer and will be given instructions on how to download and install OpenSim (a free software package) prior to the course.

Course Summary:

A team of computer simulation experts from the National Center for Simulation in Rehabilitation Research (NCSRR) at Stanford University will introduce participants to computer simulation as it applies to movement disorders. In the hands-on portion of the course, participants will learn how to use the OpenSim software package to estimate hamstrings lengths. Additional clinical applications of OpenSim will also be described.

Learning Objective 1: Describe a musculoskeletal model and its component parts
Learning Objective 2: Load a model in OpenSim and animate it with gait kinematics
Learning Objective 3: Plot hamstrings lengths over the gait cycle
Learning Objective 4: List the capabilities and limitations of computer simulation