---
license: cc-by-nc-4.0
tags:
  - biomechanics
  - human-pose
  - joint-contact-force
  - smpl
  - video
---

# JCF — Joint Contact Forces from Monocular Video

Predicts 3D hip and knee joint contact forces from a monocular video, via SMPL
pose features (and optional frozen V-JEPA 2 video features). Accompanies
*"From Pixels to Newtons: Predicting In Vivo Joint Contact Forces from Monocular Video"* ([arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.06631)) ·
code: [jeylau/jcf](https://github.com/jeylau/jcf).

## Files
- `model.pt` — force-predictor weights + architecture config
- `feat_stats.npz` — feature normalisation statistics (required)
- `text_vocab.json`, `text_embeddings.npy` — optional, for activity-label conditioning

## Usage

```bash
pip install git+https://github.com/jeylau/jcf.git
```

```python
from jcf import ForceModel

model = ForceModel.from_pretrained("jeylau/jcf")
result = model.predict("trial.npz", joint="knee", side="right")
result.forces   # (T, 3) in bodyweight (BW) units;  also .time, .sigma
```

`trial.npz` is a preprocessed SMPL sequence; see the repo for the video → features pipeline.

## Intended use & limitations
Research use only. Trained on the OrthoLoad instrumented-implant cohort (26 patients, 25 activities) and evaluated zero-shot
on an independent cohort (the Grand Challenge knee load competition data) where it matches or outperforms prior published methods. 
This is the **all-subjects** checkpoint (the one used for the paper's inverse design experiments); 
the paper's reported accuracy is **leave-one-subject-out**, so in-sample subjects look better than those held-out figures. 
Accuracy outside these tested conditions (other activities or populations) is not guaranteed.

## Citation
```bibtex
@article{lauer2026pixels,
  title   = {From Pixels to Newtons: Predicting In Vivo Joint Contact Forces from Monocular Video},
  author  = {Jessy Lauer},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.06631},
  year    = {2026}
}
```