Child head injury criteria investigation through numerical simulation of real world trauma

Finite element modelling has been used for decades in the study of adult head injury biomechanics and determination of injury criteria. Interest is recently growing in investigation on pediatric head injury which requires elaboration of biofidelic models that take into account child’s head particularities in terms of size, geometry, and mechanical properties. In this study, a finite element model of a 3-year-old child head is proposed. The model is reconstructed from real CT scan images and mechanical properties are extracted from available data in the literature. A large number of real accidents (25 falls) are reconstructed with proposed model using different brain constitutive relationships in order to investigate their influence on model response. Mechanical output parameters (HIC, pressure, shearing stress) are calculated from these simulations. Statistical analysis was performed in order to evaluate predictive capability of the parameters. Von Mises stress appears to be clearly the most predictive parameters, allowing clear distinction between injured and non-injured cases. To the authors’ knowledge, this study proposes for the first time a statistically based neurological injury criterion for a pediatric population using finite element modelling.