The course aims at providing the basic knowledge and skills on the digital human body modeling for applications in Engineering.

Knowledge and understanding

The student knows and has a good understanding of:

• techniques to model human body as a kinematic chain (virtual manikin) and their related applications to study and simulate postures and movements and in ergonomics;
• methods of external and internal digitization of the human body, of the data obtained and how to obtain three-dimensional models of human body;
• how to use 3D digital human models to design customised products, mainly medical devices (orthoses, eso- and endoprostheses).

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding

The student is able to:

• use commercial virtual manikins to simulate the activities of operators in manufacturing obtaining useful information for task planning and occupational medicine;
• digitize districts and parts of the human body with different tools and build a three-dimensional model of the digitised one;
• create three-dimensional models of districts and organs of the body starting from medical analysis images (X-rays, CT, MRI);
• design custom devices using a 3D digital model of the body or its parts/organs.

The student develops soft skills working in groups during laboratories, developing a final project in a group, realizing the presentation of the work done to be presented during the examination to the teacher and tutor.

Finally, he/she develops the ability to learn autonomously because the student is encouraged to improve his/her understanding of topics by finding more documentation available in literature.

The course is based on an "multiscale" approach, presenting digital models of the human body at different hyerarchical levels. In particular, the attention is focused on ergonomic applications, on the development of orthosis and eso- and endoprosthesis and on modeling/simulating systems and organs of the human body. To this end, the course presents the basics of multibody techniques to model spatial kinematic chains and in particular virtual manikins. Basics of spatial kinematics is also presented to understand problems related to postures and motions of virtual manikins.

The second part of the course is focused on the reconstruction of geometric models of the body or of its districts starting from different acquisition techniques, such as laser scanning, structured light and medical images (X-ray, CT scan, MRI, ...). Applications of these models to develop customized medical devices such as orthesis and leg prosthesis are then presented; for this purpose examples of the application of the finite element method to simulate deformations and stresses in elastic and hyperelastic continuous are also presented.

All the topics are presented in lectures and directly experimented in lab’s activities.

Basics in kinematics, numerical methods, computer graphics.

For the final evaluation, students in groups of two to three team mates develop a final work relevant to the topics of the course.

The exam includes the presentation of the work and a written test on the contents of the course; the mix for the evaluation is respectively 50% and 40%. The final work allows to verify the ability to apply knowledge and understanding while the written test the level of knowledge and understanding.

Moreover, the final presentation permits to evaluate soft skills developed by students; this aspect contributes for 10% to final mark.