Development of a multi-DOF whole-body skeletal model based on anatomical landmarks of a rat towards motion analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to develop a fine-grained and whole-body model of rodents for detailed motion analysis as well as dynamic simulation. As the first step, we developed a whole-body skeletal model of rat based on X-ray computed tomography (CT) data with approximately 60 μm resolution. We defined joints based on anatomical landmarks and developed a whole-body skeletal model of 168 DOF. By using motion data of a rat, we estimated sequences of joint angles of the skeletal model by inverse kinematics (IK). Furthermore, we examined the consistency of motion analyses between our results and those of previous studies.