Biomechanical considerations in the modeling of muscle function.

The instantaneous functional role of a voluntary muscle in the neighborhood of a joint is often described in clinical terms (e.g. flexor; abductor; external rotator; agonist; contracting concentrically and isokinetically) that seen sufficiently explicit and clear in certain simple situations, but have not yet been carefully defined in precise biomechanical terminology for the general case. In order to describe the functional role of a voluntary muscle as its acts to change and/or maintain the configuration of a joint, it is necessary to make certain modeling assumptions. These include modeling the joint, modeling the muscle force line of action in the joint neighborhood, and establishing the location and orientation of the three joint axes for all possible joint configurations. Modeling the joint as a point leads to simple and sensible definitions which are consistent with clinical practice. The straight line model is most conveniently used to establish the muscle force line of action. A RHO coordinate system embedded in the distal joint segment with origin at the joint center point, and with intersecting axes coincident with the F/E, A/A and I/XR axes when the joint is in the anatomical position, is the joint coordinate system of choice to describe the turning effects of the muscle about the joint. Sensible and simple biomechanical definitions for clinical terms describing muscular contractions (i.e. concentric; eccentric; isometric; isokinetic; isotonic) were presented and appear to be relatively uncontroversial. Alternative biomechanical definitions for agonistic and antagonistic muscular activity were also presented, as were arguments for choosing a simple definition based on using the joint resultant moment as the criterion measure relative to which the individual muscle's moment about J should be compared. Biomechanical definitions for determining when a muscle functions as a joint flexor or extensor, abductor or adductor, and internal or external rotator were also presented. These definitions were based on the classical concept where the muscle's instantaneous turning effect is determined by its moment about the joint center. The algebraic signs and relative magnitudes of the components of the muscle's moment about J were used to determine not only the functional behavior of the muscle (e.g. flexor vs. extensor), but also the relative contributions of the muscle to producing rotations about the three joint axes through J. A detailed critique of the restricted functional classification scheme proposed by Molbech and Carlsöö was also presented.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)