NARA Discovery
Article Details
← Back to Search Results
Journal Article

Neural Network-Driven Finite Element Modeling for Estimating Knee Joint Cartilage Mechanical Responses

Mahan Nematollahi; Amir Esrafilian; Jere Lavikainen; Mika E. Mononen; Lauri Stenroth; Jari Arokoski; David J. Saxby; David G. Lloyd; Rami K. Korhonen
Annals of Biomedical Engineering · 2026

Abstract

Low-fidelity, artificial intelligence (AI)-generated approaches are increasingly used to estimate kinematics and kinetics of human movement, which are traditionally measured by high-fidelity motion capture (Mocap) approaches. However, there are no methods to study knee joint tissue mechanics using such low-fidelity approaches. To do so, we investigated knee cartilage stresses and strains using finite element (FE) models driven by both high- and low-fidelity motion capture methods. We performed subject-specific FE modeling on nine healthy participants to evaluate tissue mechanical responses by two different approaches. High-fidelity kinematic and kinetic data were obtained through motion capture and musculoskeletal modeling, respectively, whereas artificial neural networks (ANNs) were used to estimate kinetic data from low-fidelity data (e.g., subject mass, height, age, gender, static knee abduction-adduction angle, and walking speed). These data were then used as loading inputs in the knee joint FE models that were generated from magnetic resonance images. The results indicated that the high- and low-fidelity approaches provided comparable estimates of maximum principal stress, maximum shear strain, and collagen fibril strain of tibial cartilage at the first peak of knee contact force ( p > 0.05). Significant differences between the methods in the peak values of the analyzed parameters were observed at the second peak of knee contact force ( p

Bibliographic Information

JournalAnnals of Biomedical Engineering
PublisherSpringer
Publication Date2026-07-09
Publication Year2026
Document TypeJournal Article
Print ISSN0090-6964
eISSN1573-9686
DOI10.1007/s10439-026-04266-8

Access Information

NARA Access Coverage1972-01-01~Current
Journal Homepagehttps://www.springer.com/journal/10439
Publisher PageOpen Publisher Page
Full-text access depends on NARA's subscribed coverage and institutional access.