This was part of a larger goal to create a digital twin for a robotic spine simulator "TIM" we are developing — a hands-on benchtop test bed to visualize and understand spinal mechanics interactively.

Key highlights:

Two novel methods to represent IAP in rigid body dynamics

Inclusion of nonlinear ligament, muscle, and disc behaviors

Model validated against in vivo, ex vivo, and in silico datasets

Open-source MATLAB implementation for broader accessibility

This model compiles in seconds, simulates in just over a second, and could be a powerful simulation platform for real-time applications, like robotic spine simulators or reinforcement learning frameworks for posture control.

GitHub Repository: github.com/siril-teja/R...

In this work, we developed a computationally lightweight spine model in MATLAB that doesn't just simulate musculoskeletal mechanics but also integrates intra-abdominal pressure (IAP) to reflect spinal load-sharing more accurately during everyday movements.

It would have been a worthwhile debate. Peer review vs. IP

I think there's not need to blur out the journal name. These for-profit syndicates need to be held accountable for this behavior.

Highlights:

1. Open-source: anyone can print these models and use them for spine testing. Or buy from us and support the research @ simcare.tech

2. Fully 3D printable

3. Stiffness tunable to patient biomechanics

4. Cheap

Paper 1: www.doi.org/10.1186/s412...

Paper 2: www.doi.org/10.1007/s422...

Did not see that coming!

This is pretty awesome 👏🏻👏🏻. The contact mech looks very realistic. Is there an RL agent underneath for muscle recruitment? Or some sort of optimization to be run for each task?
Any plans to introduce flexible bodies? We are building a similar model focused on spine and speed. bsky.app/profile/biom...

This is amazing to see. Thank you for taking the initiative @sheynlab.bsky.social. Let's hope the group keeps getting bigger.

I’d love to connect with fellow #spine researchers and #biomechanics enthusiasts here! Let’s chat science—feel free to send me a follow request.

These posts are just a glimpse of my full thesis—there’s much more to it, with even more to come. I'll update here as we go.

I've also been teaching a graduate course, "MECH 561 - Intro to MSK Biomechanics" these past two semesters and have been really enjoying the teaching side of things.

I'm also interested in modeling muscle recruitment, particularly in spinal stabilization. Recently, we built a high-fidelity digital twin of this human torso, from scratch...with integrated flexible bodies, and the runtime is just under 10 secs!

Doing some HIL testing with actual hardware in Dec.

Something I've been recently interested in and is the natural next phase of the above model - introducing #IVD stiffness tuning and nonlinearly to be able to represent level-by-level stiffness variability and in a population.

The solution might be lattices!

Earlier this year, we published the first fully 3D printable lumbar spine phantom which can mimic human spine stiffness under loading. doi.org/10.1007/s422...