The Effects of Filter Cutoff Frequency on Musculoskeletal Simulations of High-Impact Movements

Estimation of muscle forces through musculoskeletal simulation is important in understanding human movement and injury. Unmatched filter frequencies used to low-pass filter marker and force platform data can create artifacts during inverse dynamics analysis, but their effects on muscle force calculations are unknown. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of filter cutoff frequency on simulation parameters and magnitudes of lower-extremity muscle and resultant joint contact forces during a high-impact maneuver. Eight participants performed a single-leg jump landing. Kinematics was captured with a 3D motion capture system, and ground reaction forces were recorded with a force platform. The marker and force platform data were filtered using 2 matched filter frequencies (10–10 Hz and 15–15 Hz) and 2 unmatched filter frequencies (10–50 Hz and 15–50 Hz). Musculoskeletal simulations using computed muscle control were performed in OpenSim. The results revealed significantly higher peak quadrice...