Intracranial Displacements due to Blunt Force Impact in a Postmortem Human Surrogate Brain

Prevention and diagnosis of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are reliant on understanding the biomechanical response of the brain to external stimuli. Finite element models (FEM) and artificial head surrogates are becoming a common method of investigating the dynamic response of the brain to injurious impact and inertial stimuli. The accuracy and validity of these models is reliant on postmortem human subject (PMHS) research to produce biofidelic brain tissue responses. Previous PMHS research has been performed to measure intracranial pressures, displacements, and strains when subjected to impact and inertial loading; however, there remains a need for additional PMHS datasets to improve our understanding of the brain’s dynamics. The purpose of this study is to measure the relative brain–skull displacement in a PMHS specimen when subjected to blunt force impacts. A high-speed X-ray (HSXR) imaging system and embedded radiopaque elastomeric markers were used to record PMHS impacts at varying impact velocities for two specimens: specimen CO-108 was subjected to a series of frontal impacts and specimen CO-109 was subjected to a series of rear impacts. Brain–skull relative deformation in each specimen indicates that brain deformation is dependent both on anatomical regions and of impact direction.