Universities join forces to build better helmet
Universities join forces to study response inside brain to high-speed impacts
On the field of play, the Carleton Ravens and University of Ottawa Gee- Gees have been known to butt heads in competition.
In their laboratories, though, the rival universities are putting their heads together on cuttingedge research into brain injuries and sport helmet design.
The Ottawa universities recently announced a research grant worth nearly $700,000 to carry out a three-year study on the scientific response inside the far reaches of the brain to high-speed impacts.
“We’re really excited about this,” said Dr. Blaine Hoshizaki, director of the Neurotrauma Impact Science Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. “No one else in the world will have these data sets.”
The University of Waterloo is also involved in the project, which will use cadavers in impact-testing labs, as well as computer mapping to help design a safer helmet for football and hockey players.
“In hockey, you don’t see people dying from a hit to the head, and that is because the helmet works reasonably well for catastrophic injury,” says Hoshizaki, who has been working on helmet or “headform” design since 1989.
“Football, you do get some deaths, but it’s fairly well-managed or mitigated. But neurological disease and concussion are not managed very well by a helmet. So this data will be very helpful for us; it will get us precision. The better data we get to capture the risk of concussion, the more innovation we can do in terms of helmets to reduce that risk.”
At Carleton, co-principal investigator Dr. Oren Petel of the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering has a special interest in high-speed-impact studies and ballistics. Dr. Patrick Bishop, the lead researcher from Waterloo on the project, has a background in sports-injury prevention and head protection.
Long-term brain disease is a hotbutton issue in professional sport, which is still digesting the recent chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) data from Boston University scientists. Nearly 90 per cent of 202 brains from deceased football players showed signs of CTE, ranging from mild to severe. The number for former NFL players in the sample was even higher, at 99 per cent. The brains were donated by individuals or families concerned about behavioural issues or brain disease while the players were still living.
Researchers continue to seek a telling link between concussions and CTE. The Ottawa study will help fill in some of the grey areas in the study of grey matter.
One of the great challenges faced by neurological scientists — parts of the brain have not been mapped.
“So, when we look at trauma related to neurological disease, we are only validating part of the brain and its response to trauma,” Hoshizaki says. “This study is going to give us a really good opportunity to map different parts of the brain. … We are going to be able to get into parts of the brain we think are really important in terms of predicting risk.”
There is true collaboration here, with the best science minds of all three schools making use of the world-class, high-speed X-ray system of Carleton (provided through grants from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and Ontario Research Fund).
One of the questions still to be solved: Can repetitive, lowerimpact hits be as problematic, long-term, as one spectacular, concussion-causing hit, such as Scott Stevens on Eric Lindros, to use a hockey example?
“When you think about environmental exposure to a chemical, you have acute exposure and low-level, long-term, repeated exposure that can be detrimental in the long run,” Petel says.
“If you’re looking at head injuries in sport, you have acute, severe injuries but also low-level repeated injury that over time could develop into a disabling condition.”
Researchers want to know how the brain moves, deforms and shears under the duress of contact. Even minor, localized straining could be worth a detailed look when the complex workings of the brain are involved.
“The brain is mostly water,” Hoshizaki says, “so it doesn’t compress, but it does shear. It’s like Jell-O. You can’t compress Jell-O easily but you can shear it. And when you shear it, you damage it, and that is what is happening in the brain.”
Developing a better helmet is “a sweet spot” for Hoshizaki and his group. Over the years, he has helped develop safety standards in sport helmets and improved helmet design, including research work with Harvard on behalf of the NFL.
Hoshizaki’s lab continues to try to develop a helmet that can dramatically reduce brain rotation upon contact.
“We’re trying to understand trauma associated with sport that put athletes at risk for neurological disease,” he says. “We connect the trauma to disease.”
The funding for the research comes from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
The end goal is a safer environment for amateur and professional sports, through rules, standards and equipment.
“It makes no sense to decrease participation in sport and recreation, because it enriches people’s lives,” Hoshizaki.
We’re trying to understand trauma associated with sport that put athletes at risk for neurological disease. We connect the trauma to disease.