Development and Validation of Wireless Sensors for Applications to Human Head Angular and Mechanical Motions

In this project, we programmed a 9 degree of freedom Razor sensor, which incorporates an accelerometer and gyroscope to measure the head linear and angular motions produced by activities of daily living (ADL). The majority of studies concentrate on linear accelerations, so the purpose of this study is to determine the importance of both linear and angular components of acceleration in everyday activities and find interlinked relation between them. The sensor was validated using another calibrated and validated system. The general size and wireless nature make this sensor very suitable for use with human subjects. After obtaining informed consent, we collected data over a set of daily living activities, including car-related activities, which can be done by a normal healthy human. This information was associated with prior studies and provided the resemblance between the test and the viable method for measuring both angular and linear acceleration in a single experiment. The 20 different subject data were processed by MATLAB and analyzed for every activity, where it produced distinct results. Further analysis of result produced a strong correlation between linear and angular parameters for non-impact events. This technique may provide useful information to understand the mechanisms associated with some forms of traumatic brain injury, specifically those injuries that hypothesize a strong relationship between injury probability and angular acceleration