Quantification of the effect of ACL partial tear on knee kinematics during walking

Abstract

Summary We investigated the effect of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury on knee kinematics during walking using a musculoskeletal simulation. Motion data and ground reaction forces of five subjects during walking were captured. A detailed knee model with fourteen ligaments was developed and validated using cadaveric knee data. The ACL stiffness was reduced to mimic ACL injury. The intact and ACL injury models were embedded in full-body models for gait simulation. The knee kinematics was calculated during the stance phase. The average difference of anterior-posterior (AP) translation and internal-external (IE) rotation between ACL-deficient knee and intact knee were 5.3 mm and 2.7°, respectively. When the ACL stiffness was reduced to 25% of that of intact ACL, the peaks and average AP translations were significantly larger than those of the intact knee model. This study quantified the knee kinematics with different levels of ACL injury during walking.