cially when applied to devices which depend upon personalised design to ensure comfort and functional efficacy, as comfort and proprioception are difficult to quantify. Crucially, in prosthetic limb design we would argue that these techniques should not be used in isolation, or substituted for human-facing clinical practice. The expert prosthetist must retain control over socket design, and the presented optimisation approach could be used to provide a 'first-guess' rectification map. The prosthetist would then modify this candidate design according to their own clinical reasoning which combines palpation, user feedback and re-evaluation. Other technologies such as real-time pressure measurements and predictions from the previously reported PCA-kriging model (Steer et al. [@CR37]) incorporated with their skill and experience could provide a technology-enhanced limb assessment. This approach will help the community to test the key translational research question in this field: can the clinical application of FEA support the prosthetist's evidence base and enable delivery of comfortable, highly functional prosthetic limbs to users in a more timely and efficient manner?

Conclusion {#Sec10}
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This paper provides a first assessment of the use of multi-objective optimisation in the design of prosthetic sockets. The experiential judgement and skill-based process of prosthetic socket design is framed as a multi-objective engineering design problem. This is achieved by developing parametric models of the residual limb informed by statistical shape modelling techniques and the prosthetic socket incorporating both total surface bearing and patella tendon bearing rectifications, which allow the underlying biomechanical relationships between the residual limb and prosthetic socket to be predicted. In line with experimental data to allow detailed biomechanical validation, the developed methods show substantial potential to be used as part of a more informed socket design process, and provide clinicians with support