Comprehensive Identification of Tibiofemoral Joint Anatomy and Mechanical Response: Pathway to Multiscale Characterization

The human knee joint is a complex multi-body structure, whose substructures greatly affect its mechanical response. An understanding of the multiscale mechanics of the joint is essential for the prevention and treatment of knee joint injuries and pathologies. Due to the limitations associated with in vivo experimentation, mechanical characterization of the knee joint has commonly relied on in vitro experimentation [1,2]. Predictive and descriptive studies of the mechanical function of the knee and its substructures have commonly employed computational modeling, in particular finite element (FE) analysis, which can be driven by experimental data. With the recent focus on the use of FE models of the knee joint for scientific and clinical purposes [3–5], data for model development, verification, and validation became increasingly important, especially when relying on FE analysis for decision making. An adequate representation of a joint not only depends on the specimen-specific anatomy but may also need to be informed by specimen-specific tissue properties for model development, and specimen-specific joint/tissue response to confirm model response.