Bioengineering and Human Factors and Computational Engineering

Lower limb amputation is a life-altering event that may significantly impact an individual’s independence, social situation and quality of life. The major rehabilitation obstacle is discomfort in loading the residual limb, and the risk of soft tissue injury. A personalised socket allows the transmission of loads generated during activities of daily living, from the prosthetic limb into the musculoskeletal system. Sockets are designed by skilled prosthetists, who use iterative trial sockets to reach a final socket. This is a real challenge as the residual limb changes size throughout the day with temperature, activity and hydration, and adapts over time. Amputees must return to their prosthetist several times in the first year, at considerable expense and inconvenience. There is a clear clinical need for an improved, quantitative basis for prosthetic socket design and fabrication, and an understanding of how stump-socket fit influences long-term rehabilitation outcomes. This is the objective of our research programme.

This studentship project aims to produce novel methods to characterise the residual limb after amputation, in terms of the bone and soft tissue geometry, mechanical properties, and their response to loading. The candidate will exploit MR imaging to enable the development of first-of-kind computational models of the internal hard and soft tissue structures. The soft tissue depth, compliance and strain arising from donning the prosthetic socket and applying static loads will be measured, and used to validate the model’s predictions.

This exciting multidisciplinary project will allow the candidate to work at the centre of a team of biomechanical engineers, health scientists, medical physicists, radiographers and clinicians involved in the amputee rehabilitation care pathway. The candidate is expected to have an excellent undergraduate degree in mechanical or biomedical engineering, and will have understanding of musculoskeletal biomechanics, soft tissue mechanics and their characterisation, and potentially experience in computational biomechanical modelling.

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Dr Alex Dickinson, Bioengineering Science research group, Email: alex.dickinson<στο>soton.ac.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 2380 595394.