Many of the treatments to different injured musculoskeletal components do not fully restore their function to a pre-injury state. Many of the proposed hip, knee, shoulder and spinal implants are accompanied by a loss of the normal active behavior. Dr. El-Rich’s main research is focused towards understanding the mechanical behavior of different healthy versus symptomatic musculoskeletal components with a long term goal of restoring normal active behavior to injured or symptomatic individuals.
The mechanical behavior of the human musculoskeletal system can be investigated experimentally or with mathematical models. Given the complexity of such system, approximate solutions of the mathematical relationships describing its behavior, can be obtained by computational models such as the Finite Element (FE) models. FE modeling has been extensively used for the determination of the mechanical stresses and strains that are induced by physiological activities, pathological and injury conditions, or surgical modifications. The knowledge of bone stresses in in-vivo conditions for example, which cannot be measured noninvasively, is in fact of great importance in research, prosthesis design and clinical practice. On the other hand, in-vitro experiments are time consuming and expensive. Numerical models, when compared with most experimental techniques, estimate stress/strain field over the whole region of interest rather than in a few selected points, and permit a time-effective and virtually infinite variation of study parameters. Moreover, image processing and FE model generation procedures developed in the last 20 years facilitate patient-specific FE models to be derived from in-vivo diagnostic data.
Dr. El-Rich’s current research includes but not limited to computational biomechanics of the human spine. One of his projects aims at studying effects of inter-subject spinal curvature and trunk mass distribution variation on the mechanical response of the spine which may help understand why some people experience low back pain (LBP) while others with similar weight and height do not, even under similar activities. Also, with close collaboration with industry, Dr. El-Rich is investigating job physical demand that can be match with workers taking into account their capability and limitations. To avoid work-related injuries, industries should take proactive measures to ensure that workers and workstations, particularly those involving heavy physical work, adhere to proper ergonomics practices, measures, and standards. In particular, this research aims to prevent or reduce muscle fatigue and excessive joint forces and moment that may lead to injury by assessing and quantifying the associations between workstation factors and body response.
