This project seeks to develop a state-of-the-art adaptive modeling approach to simulate how knee osteoarthritis (OA) develops over time in response to an altered mechanical environment caused by anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury. The approach does not seek to capture every minute detail of the disease process with a highly complicated model but rather seeks to capture the first order effects with a combination of simple models. Surface geometry, joint motion, and joint load inputs will come from individual patients with one healthy knee and one osteoarthritic ACL-deficient knee. The approach will be evaluated by attempting to change the articular cartilage in a computational model of each patient's healthy knee into the articular cartilage of the patient's ACL-deficient knee.
The intellectual merit of the proposed activity will be the creation of a new adaptive simulation approach that can predict progressive changes in articular cartilage thickness over time. The method will be investigated using a novel empirical cartilage adaptation law incorporated into iterative joint-level dynamic contact simulations. The proposed research is transformative in that it may open up an entirely new avenue for studying OA initiation and progression in the knee as well as in other joints.
The broader impact of the proposed activity includes the possibility of elucidating the mechanism by which altered motions and loads lead to cartilage degeneration. Such knowledge could provide a valuable first step toward the development of new treatments for knee OA. The broader impact also includes involvement of engineering college students as mentors at a local high school with a low graduation rate and high percentage of economically disadvantaged students, and exposure of minority and female high school and college students to ways that engineering mechanics can be used to address clinically significant problems related to knee OA.
