MEASUREMENT ACCURACY OF HEAD IMPACT MONITORING SENSOR IN SPORT

Abstract

Head injury and brain trauma exposure in sport have been recognized as potential contributors to long-term neurological disorders. As a result sensors have been proposed as an impact severity monitoring tool for on-field measurement of head accelerations. The purpose of this study was to characterize the accuracy of a head impact monitoring sensor system. Peak acceleration responses from a Smart lmpact Monitor (SIM) sensor were compared against reference sensors from a Hodgson-WSU headform. The headform with SIM was impacted for 7 impact conditions and 3 inbound energies. Moderate to strong positive correlations were found between the SIM and reference sensors for all impact conditions. At higher inbound energy the SIM overestimated, suggesting that under higher risk conditions the SIM represents a conservative tool in identifying dangerous impacts.