Relationship Between Rotational Device Kinematics and Head Kinematics in a Large Animal Model of Traumatic Brain Injury.

Purpose: Large mammal head injury models allow the pathophysiological response associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI) to be studied in vivo with precise control of the physical parameters. However, only some studies have used skull-mounted sensors to measure the kinematics of the animal head rather than relying on measurements of the system delivering the impact. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to compare the kinematics between a rotational injury device (HYGE, Inc., Kittanning, PA) and the head in a swine model of TBI across a range of target peak angular velocities.

Methods: Sexually mature Yucatan swine were subjected to a rotational TBI via the HYGE device at one of three targeted peak angular velocities: 110 rad/s (n = 16), 145 rad/s (n = 12) or 170 rad/s (n = 11). Sensor packages were used to measure both the angular kinematics of the animal head and HYGE device swing arm.

Results: Peak angular velocity of the animal head was on average 18-33% lower compared to that of the HYGE device swing arm with greater relative differences for greater target peak angular velocities. Similarly, peak angular acceleration of the animal head was lower than that of the HYGE device sing arm by 11-34% on average with greater relative differences for greater target peak angular velocities.

Conclusions: This study highlights the importance of directly measuring the head kinematics of the animal in TBI models for the purpose of directional comparisons, finite element simulations, and/or scaling kinematics from human-to-animal to determine boundary conditions or animal-to-human to develop injury criteria.