BASH: Biomechanical Animated Skinned Human for Visualization of Kinematics and Muscle Activity

R. Schleicher, M. Nitschke, J. Martschinke, M. Stamminger, B. M. Eskofier, J. Klucken, A. D. Koelewijn

2021

Abstract

Biomechanical analysis of human motion is applied in medicine, sports and product design. However, visualizations of biomechanical variables are still highly abstract and technical since the body is visualized with a skeleton and muscles are represented as lines. We propose a more intuitive and realistic visualization of kinematics and muscle activity to increase accessibility for non-experts like patients, athletes, or designers. To this end, the Biomechanical Animated Skinned Human (BASH) model is created and scaled to match the anthropometry defined by a musculoskeletal model in OpenSim file format. Motion is visualized with an accurate pose transformation of the BASH model using kinematic data as input. A statistical model contributes to a natural human appearance and realistic soft tissue deformations during the animation. Finally, muscle activity is highlighted on the model surface. The visualization pipeline is easily applicable since it requires only the musculoskeletal model, kinematics and muscle activation patterns as input. We demonstrate the capabilities for straight and curved running simulated with a full-body musculoskeletal model. We conclude that our visualization could be perceived as intuitive and better accessible for non-experts than conventional skeleton and line representations. However, this has to be confirmed in future usability and perception studies.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Schleicher R., Nitschke M., Martschinke J., Stamminger M., Eskofier B., Klucken J. and Koelewijn A. (2021). BASH: Biomechanical Animated Skinned Human for Visualization of Kinematics and Muscle Activity. In Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2021) - Volume 1: GRAPP; ISBN 978-989-758-488-6, SciTePress, pages 25-36. DOI: 10.5220/0010210600250036

in Bibtex Style

@conference{grapp21,
author={R. Schleicher and M. Nitschke and J. Martschinke and M. Stamminger and B. M. Eskofier and J. Klucken and A. D. Koelewijn},
title={BASH: Biomechanical Animated Skinned Human for Visualization of Kinematics and Muscle Activity},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2021) - Volume 1: GRAPP},
year={2021},
pages={25-36},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0010210600250036},
isbn={978-989-758-488-6},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 16th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (VISIGRAPP 2021) - Volume 1: GRAPP
TI - BASH: Biomechanical Animated Skinned Human for Visualization of Kinematics and Muscle Activity
SN - 978-989-758-488-6
AU - Schleicher R.
AU - Nitschke M.
AU - Martschinke J.
AU - Stamminger M.
AU - Eskofier B.
AU - Klucken J.
AU - Koelewijn A.
PY - 2021
SP - 25
EP - 36
DO - 10.5220/0010210600250036
PB - SciTePress