Head kinematics during shaking associated with abusive head trauma

Abstract Abusive head trauma (AHT) is a potentially fatal result of child abuse but the mechanisms of injury are controversial. To address the hypothesis that shaking alone is sufficient to elicit the injuries observed, effective computational and experimental models are necessary. This paper invest...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of biomechanics 2015-09, Vol.48 (12), p.3123-3127
Main Authors: Lintern, T.O, Puhulwelle Gamage, N.T, Bloomfield, F.H, Kelly, P, Finch, M.C, Taberner, A.J, Nash, M.P, Nielsen, P.M.F
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abusive head trauma
Acceleration
Animals
Biomechanical Phenomena
Biomechanics
Biomedical materials
Brain research
Child
Child Abuse
Computation
Computer Simulation
Craniocerebral Trauma - physiopathology
Experiments
Fixtures
Head
Head injuries
Head kinematics
Humans
In vivo tests
Kinematics
Mathematical models
Mechanical Phenomena
Medical imaging
Movement
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Rigid-body computational modelling
Shaking
Sheep
Studies
Surgical implants
Vertebrae
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Summary:Abstract Abusive head trauma (AHT) is a potentially fatal result of child abuse but the mechanisms of injury are controversial. To address the hypothesis that shaking alone is sufficient to elicit the injuries observed, effective computational and experimental models are necessary. This paper investigates the use of a coupled rigid-body computational modelling framework to reproduce in vivo shaking kinematics in AHT. A sagittal plane OpenSim computational model of a lamb was developed and used to interpret biomechanical data from in vivo shaking experiments. The acceleration of the head during shaking was used to provide in vivo validation of the associated computational model. Results of this study demonstrated that peak accelerations occurred when the head impacted the torso and produced acceleration magnitudes exceeding 200 m s−2 . The computational model demonstrated good agreement with the experimental measurements and was shown to be able to reproduce the high accelerations that occur during impact. The biomechanical results obtained with the computational model demonstrate the utility of using a coupled rigid-body modelling framework to describe infant head kinematics in AHT.
ISSN:0021-9290
1873-2380
DOI:10.1016/j.jbiomech.2015.07.016