Image-based modeling of skeletal muscle: From lab to clinic to market

with Silvia Blemker, University of Virginia

Friday, March 27, 2026
12:30 PM, Goodwin Hall 190

Skeletal muscles are extraordinarily adapted motors that enable us to perform many important functions, from walking to sight to speech. Thus, muscle dysfunction arising from muscle injury, atrophy, degeneration, fatty infiltration, and fibrosis present major health care problems. The goal of the Multi-Scale MuscleMechanophysiology (“M3”) Lab’s research is to develop imaging and computational modeling techniques that allow us to quantify muscle structure and assess functional impairments, for a wide variety of applications. We aim apply these methods to answering questions related to the role of complex muscle biology and mechanics in a variety of contexts, including muscular dystrophy, muscle injury, athletic performance, and muscle regeneration. In this presentation, I will describe these approaches and present a range of contexts that span from the lab to clinic to the market.

Silvia Salinas Blemker is the Robert Thomson Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. She leads the Multi-scale Muscle Mechanophysiology Lab, which develops multi-scale computational and experimental techniques to study skeletal muscle biomechanics and physiology. The lab explores a range of applications including speech disorders, vision impairments, aging, muscular dystrophies, and human performance. New projects include developing models that incorporate for sex-differences in musculoskeletal structure and simulating the effects of estrogen levels on muscle regeneration. Dr. Blemker is also co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Springbok Analytics, a company commercializing image-based muscle analytics AI technology for many applications frommuscle diseases to sports medicine.