THE BIOMECHANICAL DETERMINANTS OF CONCUSSION: KINEMATIC AND TISSUE-LEVEL PREDICTORS OF INJURY

摘要

Concussion has been identified in recent research as being the most commonly occurring head injury in sports [1]. Many studies have reconstructed and analysed impacts from American-football [2-6]; however, very few studies have focused on impacts occurring in unhelmeted football codes [7, 8]. Finite element (FE) human head models are powerful tools for investigating intracranial stresses and brain tissue deformations during impact. The aim of this study was to simulate concussion and no-injury cases of unhelmeted football head impact using the KTH FE Human Head Model. From these simulations, kinematic and tissue-level parameters were evaluated using logistic regression analysis and their effectiveness as injury predictors was assessed.