Details
- Title: A Hands-on Guide to the NMSM Pipeline for Treatment Design
- Speakers: B.J. Fregly, Ph.D., Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Bioenginering, Rice University
- Time: Thursday, January 29, 2026 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time
This event has passed. View the recorded talk and additional resources below.
Abstract
Designing optimal orthopedic surgery, physical rehabilitation, and neurorehabilitation interventions using “digital twins” of individual patients is an important goal of neuromusculoskeletal modeling. The open-source Matlab-based Neuromusculoskeletal Modeling (NMSM) Pipeline software was developed specifically to achieve this goal by adding Model Personalization and Treatment Optimization toolsets to OpenSim.
In the first part of the webinar, Dr. Fregly will cover the two primary components of the NMSM pipeline including:
- Model Personalization: Enables researchers to personalize joint, muscle-tendon, synergy-based neural control, and deformable foot-ground contact model properties in any scaled OpenSim model
- Treatment Optimization: Uses pre-treatment experimental data (e.g., marker-based motion capture, ground reaction, EMG) as inputs for tracking, verification, and design optimizations that identify an optimal treatment design that maximizes the patient’s post-treatment movement function.
In the second part of the webinar, Dr. Fregly will use a sequence of hands-on tutorials to perform Model Personalization and Treatment Optimization steps to predict how a former collegiate soccer player should modify his soccer kicking motion to make the ball go farther. Download and installation instructions for the NMSM Pipeline will be provided prior to the webinar.
Hammond, C.V., Williams, S.T., Vega, M.M., Ao, D., Li, G., Salati, R.M., Pariser, K.M., Shourijeh, M.S., Habib, A.W., Patten, C., and Fregly, B.J. (2025) The Neuromusculoskeletal Modeling Pipeline: model personalization and treatment optimization functionality for OpenSim. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation 22, Article 112.
This webinar is offered jointly with the Restore Center and FAIR Center, NIH-funded Medical Rehabilitation Research Resource Network Centers at Stanford University.
Our Speaker
B.J. Fregly
Professor
Dr. B.J. Fregly is a Trustee Professor and CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering at Rice University. His lab works at the intersection of computational mechanics, computer science, neuroscience, musculoskeletal modeling, and clinical treatment design. His lab vision is to use patient-specific computational models of the neuromusculoskeletal system (i.e., digital twins) to design optimal neurorehabilitation and surgical treatments for neurologic and orthopedic conditions that impair movement. His lab tagline is “Perform virtual treatments on virtual patients to maximize recovery of physical function.” The NMSM Pipeline is an important step in the realization of this vision.
