Methods and systems for computer-based animation of musculoskeletal systems

Abstract

A computer-implemented method simulates a shape of a musculoskeletal system comprising a skeletal subsystem and a soft-tissue subsystem. The method comprises: simulating, by the computer system, an evolution of a skeletal subsystem model over a series of time steps to thereby determine rigid body variables representative of the shapes of the one or more rigid bodies in a physical space at each time step; and simulating, by the computer system, an evolution of a soft-tissue subsystem model over the series of time steps to thereby determine, for each of the one or more soft tissue objects, a soft-tissue object representation in an Eulerian space and an associated Eulerian representation for each vertex in the Eulerian space at each time step, the associated Eulerian representation, for each vertex and for each time step, specifying which one or more material space coordinates for the soft-tissue object correspond to the vertex at the time step. The simulation comprises coupling the skeletal and soft-tissue subsystem models using one or more coupling constraints, which constraining available solutions to the skeletal and soft-tissue subsystem models over the series of time steps. The simulation results (e.g. the rigid body variables and the soft-tissue object representation) may be saved and optionally used to render or otherwise generate an animation comprising, for each of the series of time steps, a digital image of the musculoskeletal system.