As the baby boomer generation ages, knee osteoarthritis (OA) will become increasingly prevalent in our society. Articular cartilage damage in the knee is highly dependent upon subject-specific kinematics and load distribution inside the joint. In particular, researchers have hypothesized that overloading of the medial compartment is a primary contributing factor to the development of the disease. However, since medial compartment load cannot be measured non-invasivcly in vivo, researchers typically use the external knee adduction moment during stance phase as a surrogate measure. This quantity has been correlated with the medial tibial contact force measured from an instrumented knee implant and with the risk of disease progression over time.
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