Skeletal kinematics of ankle joint complex during walking

Abstract

The movement of the articular surface with respect to its mating surface plays an important role in understanding joint mechanics and joint degeneration. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative velocity vectors between two articular surfaces in ankle joint during normal walking. Ten normal subjects underwent bi-plane fluoroscopic (BPF) imaging of the ankle joint. Three-dimensional models of the talus and tibia were reconstructed from CT images by the Seg3D software. The models were registered to two X-ray images from BPF system. Then, the ankle joint motion was quantified using custom software. The distance between two articular surfaces of the tibia and talus were calculated to find the closest point correspondences at every frame. Based on the minimum distance pair of each vertices, the relative velocity was identified for the contact surfaces. The tangential vectors of the contact surface were computed from surface shape to obtain tangential relative velocity vectors. These tangential relative velocity vectors were visualized the translation and rotation movement on the contact surface of the talus and tibia. This visualization could be helpful to understand the ankle joint interaction on the articular surface. This study was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the NRF (NRF-2017R1A2B2010763) and by Projects for Research and Development of Police Science and Technology through CRDPST and KNPA (PA-C000001).