RECENT ADVANCES IN BIOMECHANICS OF BRAIN INJURY RESEARCH - A REVIEW

Biomechanics of cerebral trauma attempts to delineate the dynamic resp onse of the cranial vault contents to a direct or indirect impact to t he head. Consequently, brain injury mechanisms and associated toleranc e to impact can be deduced by establishing a relationship between neur ological deficit and mechanical dosage. The resulting information is i nvaluable to brain injury prevention and diagnosis. This paper present s an overview of our recent research on head injury focusing on establ ishing brain injury biomechanics by developing a comprehensive and val idated mathematical model. To achieve our goal, we developed a compreh ensive three-dimensional finite element human head model, finite eleme nt porcine head models, and sensors to monitor head kinematics and bra in strains by neutral density accelerometers. The information obtained from this research thus far provided a predictive and somewhat valida ted mathematical model of the head, which clearly shows a corresponden ce between brain mechanical response and experimentally observed injur ies.