Our Breakthrough Basics

Traumatic brain injury, including concussion, occurs in sporting activities when the head is subjected to sudden high magnitude acceleration due to an impact. Such impacts may occur as a result of accidental or intentional collisions between athletes, or between an athlete and an inanimate object, e.g., a ball, goal post, fence, or the ground. i1Biometrics is prioritizing its research and development efforts in areas surrounding both linear and rotational acceleration.

Linear acceleration occurs when the head experiences a change in speed while moving in a straight line, for example when an outfielder collides with the outfield wall while tracking a deep fly ball. Rotational acceleration occurs when the head experiences a change in its rate of rotation, even if there is no straight-line motion. Since most sporting impacts include components of both linear and rotational acceleration, we made it our goal to create a measurement system that could capture all the elements relevant to brain injury.

We designed the i1 Biometrics Impact Intelligence System with the Virtual Measurement System to provide high-accuracy measurements of all head motions, that may contribute to traumatic brain injury. Because the system is coupled to the skull, not the helmet, shoulder or chin strap, we are able to precisely measure linear acceleration and rotational acceleration in 3 dimensions.

To validate the performance of our design, we built the Impact Lab -- and put our system to the ultimate challenge with an impact pendulum tester and a linear impact tester, both calibrated for high-performance data collection.

The i1 Biometrics Impact Intelligence System was then built into a custom headform with an articulated mandible

... and we let the fun begin!

For more information about the study, click the button below and download our free white paper: