RISK PREDICTION OF TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY FROM CAR ACCIDENTS

The purpose of this study is to build a risk model to predict the probability of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The focus is on the occurrence of one of TBI outcomes, Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI), due to car crashes. This goal is achieved by developing a multilevel framework, which includes vehicle crash Finite Element (FE) simulations with a dummy along with FE simulations of the brain using loading conditions derived from the crash simulations. The framework is used to propagate uncertainties and obtain probabilities of DAI based on certain injury criteria such as Cumulative Strain Damage Measure (CSDM). The risk model is constructed from a support vector machine classifier, adaptive sampling, and Monte-Carlo simulations. In contrast to previous risk models, it includes the uncertainty of explicit parameters such as impact conditions (e.g., velocity, impact angle), and material properties of the brain model. This risk model can provide, for instance, the probability of DAI for a given assumed velocity.