Category Archives: head injury

Head injury Dr. John Lloyd has served attorneys nationwide for 25+ years in biomechanics, human factors, helmet testing and motorcycle accident expert

New Helmet Technology Reduces Brain Injuries

Dr. John Lloyd, Research Director of Brains, Inc. announced today that football head injuries and concussions can be reduced up to 50 percent with their new helmet technology.

football helmet prototype

Tampa, FL – John Lloyd PhD, Research Director of Brains, Inc. announced their latest breakthrough in football helmet safety today. The unique new helmet technology promises to provide up to 50 percent more protection against football head injuries and concussions. The helmet technology has wide application and can be used in every kind of helmet from baby helmets to military helmets, and for all athletes at risk of concussion and head injuries such as football players, cyclists, skiers, snowboarders, skateboarders, hockey players, baseball players, lacrosse players, boxers, soccer players, equestrian / horse-riding sports, such as polo and horse racing, as well as motorcycle and race car drivers.

Recent medical research documents found that concussions and cumulative head impacts can lead to lifelong neurological consequences such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease known as CTE and early Alzheimer’s.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates 1.6 – 3.8 million sport-related brain injuries annually in the United States. Of these 300,000 are attributed to youth football players, some of whom die from their injuries every year – a tragedy difficult for their mothers and families to recover from. The severity of the issue touching both the nation’s youth and professional athletes has led to thousands of lawsuits and Congressional Hearings. Growing concern has spread to the White House where President Obama recently spoke at the Healthy Kids and Safe Sports Concussion Summit.

The BRAINS research team, led by renowned brain injury expert, Dr. John Lloyd, has worked for years on their project to help make sports safer. A controversial subject, some opponents have stated that concussion prevention is impossible. Dedicated to saving lives and preserving brain health, Dr. Lloyd and team persevered with their work leading to this new innovation. “Our results show that forces associated with concussion and brain injury are reduced more than 50% compared to similar testing with a leading football helmet,” said Dr. John Lloyd, Research Director. Results of our prototype helmet technology compared to the Riddell Revolution Speed varsity helmet are presented below: “The patent-pending matrix of non-Newtonian materials will not only benefit football, but can be utilized in all sports helmets as well as military, motorcycle and even baby helmets to improve protection and dramatically reduce the risk of brain injuries,” reported Dr. Lloyd. The materials are inexpensive, and produce a helmet that is considerably lighter and more comfortable than a traditional helmet. Two additional applications of this new safety technology include medical flooring especially in hospitals and nursing homes or child play areas , as well as vehicle interiors.

Testing Methods: A modification to the NOCSAE standard test apparatus has been developed and validated for impact testing of protective headwear to include measurement of both linear and angular kinematics . This apparatus consists of a twin wire fall test system equipped with a drop arm that incorporates a 50th percentile Hybrid III head and neck assembly from HumaneticsATD. The aluminum flyarm runs on Teflon sleeves through parallel braided stainless steel wires, which are attached to mounting points in the building structure and anchored into the concrete foundation. The anvil onto which the head drop systems impacts consists of a 350mm x 350mm steel based plate. Both the Riddell Revolution Speed varsity football helmet and prototype helmet were dropped from a height 2.0 meters onto a flat steel anvil, in accordance with ASTM standards, generating an impact velocity of 6.2 m/s (13.9 mph). The following slow motion videos show testing on an unhelmeted head and prototype using this apparatus

Instrumentation: A triaxial accelerometer from PCB Piezotronics (Depew, NY) and three DTS-ARS Pro 18k angular rate sensors (Diversified Technical Systems, Seal Beach, CA) affixed to a triaxial block were installed at the center of mass of the Hybrid III head form (HumaneticsATD, Plymouth, MI). Data from the accelerometer and angular rate sensors were acquired using National Instruments (Austin, TX) compact DAQ hardware.

Analysis: In accordance with SAE J211, data from the analog sensors were acquired at 10,000 Hz, per channel, using LabView (National Instruments, Austin, TX), then filtered in Matlab (The Mathworks, Natick, MA) using a phaseless 4th order Butterworth filter with a cut off frequency of 1650Hz. Angular acceleration measures were derived from the angular velocity data based on a 5-point least squares quartic equation.

About Lloyd Industries, Inc.

Lloyd Industries, Inc., located in San Antonio, Florida, is a research and development company focused on the biomechanics of brain injuries. The company was founded in 2004 by John D. Lloyd Bio, Ph.D., CPE, CBIS, Board Certified Ergonomist and Certified Brain Injury Specialist. He has also provided expert witness services nationwide for over 20 years in the fields of biomechanics, ergonomics and human factors, specializing in the biomechanics of brain injury, including sport and motorcycle helmet cases, slips and falls, motor vehicle accidents and pediatric head trauma. Lloyd Industries is open to licensing with manufacturers to bring this much-needed technology to market for the protection of sports participants and athletes of all ages. For additional information call 813-624-8986.

Sport Concussion

Researchers Discover Objective Indicator of Concussion

Lends to opportunity to Protect Professional and Youth Sports Players from Traumatic Brain Injuries

Sport concussion researchers teamed up with football players at a Florida high school. Ten players were equipped with Riddell Revolution Speed helmets, with the embedded Simbex HITS encoders, which were worn throughout the 2011/2 football season. The HITS system recorded the severity and location of all head impacts during both football practice sessions and games.

To measure the physiological effects of acute and cumulative head impacts, players agreed to wear a wireless EEG system, which was housed on the back of the shoulder pads. In addition, heart rate variability, respiration rate as well as linear and angular motion was recorded using a Tricorder developed by ReThink Medical.

During the 2011/2- football season, several concussive level impacts were recorded. Two players were removed from the field due to suspected sport concussion / mTBI, one of whom was wearing the complete data acquisition system, including HITS encoders, Nicolet EEG and ReThink Tricorder at the time of impact and for approximately 30 minutes post-impact. For the first time we have the opportunity to investigate physiological responses and brain activity changes in response to a concussive level head impact.

Analysis of one player’s self-reported concussive impact clearly shows decreased Gamma band activity and increased Theta band activity in the frontal cortex of the brain immediately following significant head impact. This suggests that the player had reduced cognitive performance and was perhaps in a ‘drowsy’ state for about 10 minutes following impact. During this time, the player may have been dazed and confused and certainly less effective on the field. But more importantly, his ability to protect himself from a second, potentially harmful impact was greatly compromised.

The findings of our study clearly indicate compromised brain activity as a result of head impact, which appears to be correlated with the magnitude of the impact.

Normalized Power Trend Analysis. Normalized Theta (Left) and Gamma (Right) Power (log of % power within band) of a football player, who experienced a concussion following a moderately forceful head impact (Red line), show phasic modulations in power throughout the practice. Fluctuations in power rarely exceed 25% of the total average power for the recording session in Theta and Gamma frequencies. Yet, immediately following a violent hit (Red line), gamma power begins to decline rapidly and exceeds an arbitrary criterion of ±50% change from average power (peaking at 90 min.). Indeed gamma power remained within 20% of the mean for most of the duration of practice, exceeding this degree of change for over 10 minutes after the impact and two other brief episodes (around 20 min. and 50 min. for less than five minutes; Note, the first and last five minutes were ignored due to the temporal filtering artifact at both edges). Whereas, a peak in theta power coincided with the greatest change in gamma power, the degree of change from the mean normalized power never exceeded 10%. This preliminary data suggests that our algorithms provide (1) the sensitivity to detect significant change in brain activity following a concussive event, and (2) specificity in detecting which frequency band (i.e., gamma) provides the most meaningful brain signal for detecting concussion / brain trauma

Our future goals for the upcoming football season include a new micro-EEG recorder, which is in development, that will allow unobtrusive measurement of several players simultaneously during both football practice and games.

Ultimately, it is our hope that this technology will be widely available to both professional and youth teams so that medical staff can monitor the brain health of players in real-time so that injured participants can be objectively identified, effectively protected and successfully treated.

Biomechanics Laboratory

I employ state-of-the-science biomechanics resources in my evaluations, as depicted in the following figure. This biomechanics laboratory includes various certified biofidelic mannequins, dedicated test apparatus, data acquisition hardware, software and calibrated sensor instrumentation, professional photography and high speed and videography equipment.

Much of my research and work for civil law suits focusses on biomechanical evaluation of helmets, in particular sports helmets, including football and ski helmets.

For helmet testing, we have a standard NOCSAE (National Operating Committee for Standards in Athletic Equipment) head drop system

However, the standard NOCSAE system only measures forces associated with linear acceleration, which are attributed with focal head injuries, such as skull fractures. This system has a rigid neck and therefore cannot measure rotational or angular accelerations, which are associated with traumatic brain injuries, such as concussion and subdural hematomas. We have a modified helmet drop test system, developed in collaboration with the University of Maine, Advanced Manufacturing Center, validation of which has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The following image shows both the NOCSAE and modified helmet test systems in parallel.

Recent research shows that standard linear impact tests may not fully account for impact forces as they do not incorporate angular velocity. Therefore, I have created an inverted pendulum system, which is more representative of a standing fall

Additionally, the biomechanics laboratory is equipped with the following resources:

Monorail head drop assembly
Twin wire guided drop system (NOCSAE)
Weighted pendulum impactor
Linear bearing table
Height-adjustable, eletromagenetically-controlled freefall drop platform
20,000N impact force plate
880lb ceiling mounted lift system
Certified biofidelic adult headforms
CRABI12 biofidelic infant mannequin
Hybrid III 3-yr old biofidelic mannequin (KSS)
National Instruments 32 channel USB-6343 X-series data acquisition system
LabView 2009 data acquisition software.
Calibrated sensors, including Kistler and PCB Piezotronics tri-axial accelerometers, MEMS triple axis digital gyroscopes, and PCB Piezotronics uni-axial and tri-axial load cells.
Selection of flooring materials, including carpeting, wood and laminates as well as concrete and wood sub-flooring surrogates
Professional still photography equipment
Normal speed and high speed (up to 1kHz) videography equipment
Photography flash and ‘hot’ lighting

Dr. John Lloyd | Motorcycle Crash, Biomechanics, Human Factors Expert

813-624-8986 | John@DrBiomechanics.com