Biomedical sciences instrumentation
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Translational and rotational accelerations from blunt head impact can induce excessive brain strain and cause traumatic brain injuries. However, it is not clear which acceleration plays a major role in the mechanism. ⋯ Results indicated that rotational acceleration contributes more than 90% of total strain, and translational acceleration produces minimal strain. Therefore, the rotational component is a more important biomechanical metric in this study.
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Facial bone fractures in the military can result from direct loading of night vision goggles on the orbital region. Facial fracture research has shown that increasing the area over which the load is applied increases the load tolerance. The purpose of this study is to apply this concept to reducing the risk of facial bone fracture from night vision goggle impacts. ⋯ Two impacts to the male subject with a custom face shield resulted in peak loads of 4554 N and 5101 N with no injury. The final impact to the male subject had a peak load of 2010 N with complete orbital fracture due to the absence of a countermeasure. From these tests it is shown that facial fracture risk from night vision goggle impact can be reduced using a contoured rigid face shield.
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Commonly considered a continuum of injuries, diffuse brain injury (DBI) ranges from mild concussion to severe diffuse axonal injury. The lower end of the spectrum is generally referred to as mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). More severe forms of DBI have garnered extensive experimentation while these milder cases are considerably less explored. ⋯ Prior experimentation estimated an angular acceleration of approximately 350 krad/s2 is necessary for the induction of mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) in the rodent. To induce these magnitudes of angular acceleration in a repeatable manner, the impacting interface must be critically analyzed. This investigation uses a mathematical model based on parameters of a previously developed experimental model to assess the impacting interface such that angular accelerations are sufficient to produce MTBI in the rodent.
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Comparative Study Controlled Clinical Trial
Thoracic and lumbar spine accelerations in everyday activities.
The purpose of this study was to quantify thoracic and lumbar spine accelerations for men and women of different body sizes during daily activities. Measured spine accelerations were compared to determine if there were significant differences in peak accelerations based on gender, size, and spine location. ⋯ Based on the statistical analysis, it was determined that gender and body size did not have a significant effect on peak accelerations of the thoracic and lumbar spine. The findings from the present study are of great value to researchers in order to understand the acceleration patterns of the human body during low impact accelerations.
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Clinical Trial
Reliability of respiratory tidal volume estimation by means of ambulatory inductive plethysmography.
Ambulatory monitoring of ventilatory parameters in everyday life, field research and clinical situations may offer new insights into respiratory functioning in health and disease. Recent technological advances that employ ambulatory inductive plethysmography could make monitoring of respiration outside the clinic and laboratory feasible. Inductive plethysmography provides a method for nonintrusive assessment of both timing (e.g. respiration rate) and volumetric parameters (e.g. tidal volume and minute ventilation), by which tidal volume is initially calibrated to direct measures of volume. ⋯ Furthermore, reliability estimates were high and consistent across respiratory measures (typically r's = 0.7-0.8). These results suggest the validity of ambulatory inductive plethysmographic measurement of respiration, at least under relatively sedentary conditions. Findings also point to the stability of individual differences in respiratory parameters over consecutive weeks.