Samenvatting
A series of physical models of the human head and neck were constructed to study the biomechanics of the cervical spinal cord during a simulated rollover crash. These models incorporate anatomically similar surrogates for the skull, vertebrae, spinal cord and brain. The spinal cord and brain surrogates have embedded within them a grid of dots to allow visualisation of the deformation patterns within the tissues during the experiment. The mechanical properties of each element of the physical models were matched to those of the human. The kinematics of the head and spine were validated carefully. (A)