Facilities

The Williams Lab has a full complement of equipment for collecting experimental biomechanics data, including:

• X-ray Reconstructing of Moving Morphology:two OEC-9000 fluoroscopes mounted with two synchronized high-speed cameras (Oqus 310, Qualisys, Sweden)
• Electromyography:10 Grass EMG Amplifiers for indwelling or surface electromyography
• Bone strain:14 Vishay Model 2120 Strain Conditioners and Amplifiers for in vivo and in vitro bone strain studies
• Sonomicrometry:4 Channel Sonometrics system for studies of in vivo muscle strain
• Bite force:adjustable strain gauge-based bite force transducers for medium and small animals
• Data acquisition:Integration of signals is accomplished via two systems, depending on the nature of the study: 1) a 32-channel National Instruments Data Acquisition System and associated LabView Software for simultaneously recording all non-kinematic signals; 2) a 64-channel Measurement Computing Data Acquisition system for simultaneously recording high speed video from the Oqus cameras and all other signals.

Other shared research instrumentation and core facilities available for comparative and experimental biomechanics includes:

• an 8-camera Qualysis motion capture system that facilitates both high speed digital video and infrared marker motion capture up to 10,000 fps
• a Bertec Quad-belt force-plate instrumented treadmill and standard force plates for locomotion research;
• the OU MicroCT facility with a TriFoil Imaging eXplore CT 120 Small Animal X-Ray CT Scanner

Purchase of much of this equipment, including the XROMM system, Qualysis motion analysis system and Bertec treadmill was made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation (DBI- DBI-0922988).