A Realistic Subject-Specific Finite Element Model of Human Head-Development and Experimental Validation

Abstract

Head injury, being one of the main causes of death or permanent disability, continues to remain as a major health problem with significant socioeconomic costs. Therefore, there is a need for biomechanical studies of head injury. To assess the biomechanics of head injury mechanism, many finite element head models (FEHMs) had been built. However, in order to reduce the computation efforts, most of these FEHMs were simplified and details of complex head anatomical features are often ignored in modeling. The main purpose of the present work is to build and validate a detailed finite element model of human head in order to better predict the mechanical responses of the human head during head injury. Geometrical information of a human head is obtained from medical images of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with the use of image-processing software, for segmentation and reconstruction of a comprehensive FEHM. The head model is then validated against both intracranial pressure (ICP) data of the two experimental cadaver tests. General shape trends, magnitudes and duration of the pressure pulses in the simulation agree well with the experimental pressure pulse. Overall, there is a good correlation between the simulations and the experiments. Once being validated, this representative FEHM can be used in the assessment of the injurious effects of different loading conditions and enable the development of enhanced head injury and protection equipments through the reconstruction of the available real-world accidents information.