DESIGN OF A FOUR-BAR TRNSFEMORAL POLYCENTRIC

PROSTHESIS USING INTELLIGENT ALGORITHMS

INFORMATION AND
KNOWLEDGE
INDUSTRIES
Technical note Omar Ismael López-Suárez, Jonathan Martínez-Paredes, Ariel Fuerte- Artificial Intelligence and
Hernández, Juan Pablo Campos-López, Samuel Morales-Bonilla, Iván Simulation
Altamirano-Olguín, Oscar Taxilaga-Zetina, Gerardo Hernández-Valencia.

DESIGN OF A FOUR-BAR TRNSFEMORAL POLYCENTRIC

PROSTHESIS USING INTELLIGENT ALGORITHMS
Omar-Ismael López-Suárez1, Jonathan Martínez-Paredes1, Ariel Fuerte-Hernández2, Juan-Pablo Campos-López1, Samuel
Morales-Bonilla1, Iván Altamirano-Olguín1, Oscar Taxilaga-Zetina3, Gerardo Hernández-Valencia1.
1Universidad Politécnica del Valle de México

2 Universidad Tecnológica de México

3 ITSSAT México

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6036/9036

According to data issued by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) in Mexico, 75 amputations are
practiced daily. Furthermore, statistics conclude that the production of prostheses in the country is less than 1,500 units per
year, as a result, the manufacture of prostheses has a deficit and only a few patients can be treated [1]. With the aim of
providing a solution to this problem, this work was validated by experts from the Mexican Society of Orthotists and
Prosthetists (SMOP) and the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO).

In this research, the optimization of a four-bar polycentric prosthesis was performed by using intelligent algorithms, in order
to obtain the trajectory of the Instant Centre of Rotation (ICR) known as “centrode”, becoming similar to the one of the
human knee during the flexo-extension motion, and allowing to achieve a movement close to the normal gait. The evaluation
of centrode is a very important parameter because is related to the kinematics and forces that are involved in the gait cycle
and the dynamical stabilization processes.

There are many different procedures for the optimization of the mechanism, a very attractive alternative is the Artificial
Neural Networks (ANN). Taking into account biological parameters, a mathematical equation of a typical ANN can be
formulated with a multilayer perceptron (Figure1.a). The mathematical training algorithm was Levenberg-Marquardt
backpropagation [2].

In order to obtain the input and output parameters of the neural network, an inverse kinematic analysis was carried out with
20 000 different configurations of the four-bar mechanism, 70% were used to train the network, 15% randomly selected to
validate the network and the remaining 15% to test the network. The input layer has 60 variables, while the output layer has
4 outputs, to validate the experimental set up, the model of the first hidden layer had a configuration of 16 neurons and the
second hidden layer has 22 neurons. The first stopping criteria were set at a maximum of 50 000 iterations with a minimum
mean squared error of 0.00001. The values between the estimated and real results of the four outputs show a maximum value
of correlation coefficient R2 = 0.9 [3].

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 DESIGN OF A FOUR-BAR TRNSFEMORAL POLYCENTRIC
PROSTHESIS USING INTELLIGENT ALGORITHMS

INFORMATION AND
KNOWLEDGE
INDUSTRIES
Technical note Omar Ismael López-Suárez, Jonathan Martínez-Paredes, Ariel Fuerte- Artificial Intelligence and
Hernández, Juan Pablo Campos-López, Samuel Morales-Bonilla, Iván Simulation
Altamirano-Olguín, Oscar Taxilaga-Zetina, Gerardo Hernández-Valencia.

Fig. 1. a) Neural Network. b) Four-bar Prosthesis. c) Mechanical Design of Prosthesis.

These results were compared with experimental measurements obtained in real time and with help of statistical validation.
The coefficient of determination between the input and output data of the ANN was used as well. The architecture of the
network modeling is a multilayer perceptron as it was described above and indicates that the value of R2 is close to 1.

The kind of mechanical machining process allowed to obtain a voluntary control over the prosthesis, as well as supporting
the entire weight of all the body, and keeping the prosthesis stable. Prosthetic knee flexion occurs at 5° with the ICR
localized at120 mm above the reference point (figure 1.b, 1.c). Neural Networks have been an efficient tool to design and
personalize prosthetic elements, opening the possibility to develop prosthetic elements in the near future.

REFERENCES
1] VÁZQUEZ-VELA, Eduardo, Los Amputados, un reto para el estado, Eduardo, Acta de la sesión del 4 de marzo de 2015 Academia Nacional de
Medicina, 2015, Académica Nacional de Medicina, p 1-9.
[2] POLIAKOV, Oleksandr et al. MULTICRITERIA SYNTHESIS OF A POLYCENTRIC KNEE PROSTHESIS FOR TRANSFEMORAL AMPUTEES, World
Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, 2012, vol. 64, p. 257-262.
[3] LÓPEZ-SUÁREZ, Omar Ismael, et al. INVERSE KINEMATIC ANALYSIS OF A FOUR-BAR POLYCENTRIC KNEE MECHANISM APLLYING
ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS, DYNA New Technologies, Enero-Diciembre 2018, vol. 5, no. 1, [14 p.]. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6036/NT8749

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