American professional football provides a unique opportunity to study mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI). That opportunity comes not from the particularly high frequency of occurrence, but from the following facts: (1) The game is played on a precisely laid out grid; (2) The movement of players is recorded by video cameras from a multitude of directions and angles; (3) The subjects are all of comparable stature, age and physical condition, and they are all equipped with virtually the same protective headgear; and (4) physicians at the sidelines are available immediately to diagnose and treat an injury. This unique "laboratory" is analyzed through a programme involving four complimentary approaches: (i) Video recordings of MTBI events are analyzed to determine the relative speed, direction and impact sites on player's heads; (ii) In addition to clinical observations made by team physicians, concussed and uninjured players are subjected to neuropsychological assessment; (iii) Re-enactments of certain collisions are conducted with instrumented anthropometric test devices (ATD's); and (iv) responses from the ATD heads are used to derive a mathematical model (finite element model (FEM)) of the human brain that predicts intracranial distortion patterns. The overall objective of this programme is to develop new biomechanical criteria for MTBI. This paper outlines the methodology, and considers one example of incident reconstruction.
Abstract