Markerless Motion Capture: The lab conducts pioneering work on the development of a markerless method for the capture of three-dimensional human movements. This technique avoids the problems inherent in conventional marker-based methods, while maintaining the same accuracy. This new ability to capture unencumbered movement in a natural setting could open a new era in the study of human movement.

An Illustration of the markerless motion capture methods applied to sports activities

Clinical Applications

Osteoarthritis is a progressive degeneration of cartilage that afflicts a large portion of the aging population. The lab has combined magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods with gait analysis to identify relationships between gait mechanics and cartilage changes for healthy and injured/diseased knees. Analysis of the walking patterns of patients with degenerative changes (osteoarthritis) of the medial compartment of the knee joint identified dynamic load factors that influence treatment outcome. Recent work has produced a shoe design to change walking mechanics to reduce the rate of progression of osteoarthritis at knee. This shoe recently completed a successful clinical trial.

Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury (ACL): The ACL is one of the four major ligaments of the knee and frequently injured during sports activity such as basketball, soccer, or volleyball while landing on a single limb and stopping or pivoting. The lab is currently using the markerless motion capture method to analyze the mechanics of the ACL injury. We are also looking at the functional implications of ACL surgical reconstruction to create objective guidelines for the surgical placement of the ACL graft.