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An Instrumented Mouthguard for Measuring Linear and Angular Head Impact Kinematics in American Football

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a novel instrumented mouthguard as a research device for measuring head impact kinematics. To evaluate kinematic accuracy, laboratory impact testing was performed at sites on the helmet and facemask for determining how closely instrumented mouthguard data matched data from an anthropomorphic test device. Laboratory testing results showed that peak linear acceleration (r 2 = 0.96), peak angular acceleration (r 2 = 0.89), and peak angular velocity (r 2 = 0.98) measurements were highly correlated between the instrumented mouthguard and anthropomorphic test device. Normalized root-mean-square errors for impact time traces were 9.9 ± 4.4% for linear acceleration, 9.7 ± 7.0% for angular acceleration, and 10.4 ± 9.9% for angular velocity. This study demonstrates the potential of an instrumented mouthguard as a research tool for measuring in vivo impacts, which could help uncover the link between head impact kinematics and brain injury in American football.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank X2Impact for donation of devices and equipment required for laboratory testing. This work was supported in part by the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award 1UL1 RR025744 for the Stanford Center for Clinical and Translational Education and Research (Spectrum) and by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health.

Conflict of interest

The authors have no personal financial conflict of interests related to this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    David B. Camarillo & Pete B. Shull

  2. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    James Mattson, Rebecca Shultz & Daniel Garza

Authors
  1. David B. Camarillo
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  2. Pete B. Shull
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  3. James Mattson
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  4. Rebecca Shultz
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  5. Daniel Garza
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to David B. Camarillo.

Additional information

Associate Editor Dan Elson oversaw the review of this article.

David B. Camarillo and Pete B. Shull contributed equally and are considered co-first authors.

Appendix

Appendix

Figure 7
figure 7

Individual sensor traces of the ATD for the typical impact shown in Fig. 6 (Site B, impact velocity: 5.5 m/s). Sensor locations are depicted in Fig. 2

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Figure 8
figure 8

Example facemask impact (Site A, impact velocity: 3.7 m/s) showing the approximately 150 Hz resonance in the linear acceleration z-component and angular acceleration y-component. Facemask impacts occured in the sagittal plane, for which the moment of inertia of the mouthguard cantilevered tab (Fig. 1) is lowest and therefore the resonant frequency is lowest. Mouthguard tab resonance in the sagittal plane is a likely source of the 13–44% over-prediction error (Table 3). Over-prediction errors have also been observed with in-helmet sensing where peak angular acceleration was overpredicted by up to 500% for facemask impacts.3

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Camarillo, D.B., Shull, P.B., Mattson, J. et al. An Instrumented Mouthguard for Measuring Linear and Angular Head Impact Kinematics in American Football. Ann Biomed Eng 41, 1939–1949 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-013-0801-y

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