- Reaction score
- 66
- Points
- 530
Concussion is a serious health hazard in the IED threat environment that our troops operate in.Until now there was no way to gauge the effects that blast has on the brain.
http://www.armytimes.com/issues/stories/0-ARMYPAPER-2926378.php
Helmet device helps gauge brain injuries
By Matthew Cox and Gina Cavallaro - [email protected] and [email protected]
Posted : August 13, 2007
For the first time, soldiers headed to combat will wear helmets rigged with tiny sensors for tracking bomb-related brain injuries.
Beginning early next year, equipment officials plan to start attaching dosimeters, special devices that measure the forces soldiers are exposed to in an explosion, to the helmets they wear in Iraq and Afghanistan with the hope of better understanding the effects on the brain.
Soldiers operating in Iraq and Afghanistan are routinely exposed to blasts from roadside bombs. Though many of those soldiers escape visible injury, medical experts increasingly are concerned about the long-term effects of mild head trauma.
Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody ordered the battlefield test of dosimeters after learning about the technology during a visit earlier this year to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s nanotechnology laboratory.
The effects of close proximity to explosions often results in mild traumatic brain injuries that are hard to detect, with symptoms sometimes not developing for years, he told Army Times.
A helmet sensor could be a start in gauging the incidence of brain injuries, Cody said. He noted that use of dosimeters could aid soldiers in verifying their injuries when seeking medical treatment and benefits.
“I don’t want soldiers to have to prove they were involved in something,” he said. “I want to take that burden off of them. This will also help us start building a database of these types of injuries.
Some professional football players wear similar sensors inside their helmets, but they only measure the acceleration of the trauma, or how fast the head is moving when it collides with the ground or another object.
“The devices we are putting on the helmets measure both the acceleration and the over and under pressure” that occurs in an explosion, said Program Executive Office Soldier’s Col. John McGuiness, project manager for Soldier Equipment.
The pending battlefield use of dosimeters is part of an attempt to build a knowledge base on a condition where statistical data is nonexistent, he said.
In addition to PEO Soldier, the project team includes officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., and MIT.
The Marine Corps is also pursuing a similar effort.
the Army recently sent out training guidance to educate leaders about mild traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
In mid-August, Army equipment officials will begin blast-testing the two separate dosimeters that soldiers will wear in the battlefield. Both of the lightweight devices were selected out of 11 different entries industry submitted as part of an Army request-for-proposal in early July, McGuiness said.
The smaller model, about the size of a silver dollar, weighs less than an ounce and will be mounted inside the Army Combat Helmet beneath the pad that rests on top of the head.
The other model is larger and shaped like a T, McGuiness said. The three-ounce device will be attached to the outside rear of the ACH.
The initial goal is to start outfitting a brigade combat team with the devices by early next year, McGuiness said. The BCT hasn’t been selected yet, but it will most likely be a unit that is training for an upcoming combat deployment, he said.
“We want them to be able to train on this in a field problem,” McGuiness said, explaining that medical personnel will have to be instructed on how to download data from the device.
“This is a version 1.0,” he said. “There is probably going to be some bugs that will have to be worked out.”
Some of these devices may remain on soldier helmets for an entire deployment, while others may be accessed and downloaded when a soldier goes to sick call, McGuiness said.
McGuiness stressed that it’s still too early to predict how the program will evolve.
“We just don’t know what we don’t know yet, but we know we have got to do something,” McGuiness said. “This is the first step into it.”
http://www.armytimes.com/issues/stories/0-ARMYPAPER-2926378.php
Helmet device helps gauge brain injuries
By Matthew Cox and Gina Cavallaro - [email protected] and [email protected]
Posted : August 13, 2007
For the first time, soldiers headed to combat will wear helmets rigged with tiny sensors for tracking bomb-related brain injuries.
Beginning early next year, equipment officials plan to start attaching dosimeters, special devices that measure the forces soldiers are exposed to in an explosion, to the helmets they wear in Iraq and Afghanistan with the hope of better understanding the effects on the brain.
Soldiers operating in Iraq and Afghanistan are routinely exposed to blasts from roadside bombs. Though many of those soldiers escape visible injury, medical experts increasingly are concerned about the long-term effects of mild head trauma.
Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody ordered the battlefield test of dosimeters after learning about the technology during a visit earlier this year to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s nanotechnology laboratory.
The effects of close proximity to explosions often results in mild traumatic brain injuries that are hard to detect, with symptoms sometimes not developing for years, he told Army Times.
A helmet sensor could be a start in gauging the incidence of brain injuries, Cody said. He noted that use of dosimeters could aid soldiers in verifying their injuries when seeking medical treatment and benefits.
“I don’t want soldiers to have to prove they were involved in something,” he said. “I want to take that burden off of them. This will also help us start building a database of these types of injuries.
Some professional football players wear similar sensors inside their helmets, but they only measure the acceleration of the trauma, or how fast the head is moving when it collides with the ground or another object.
“The devices we are putting on the helmets measure both the acceleration and the over and under pressure” that occurs in an explosion, said Program Executive Office Soldier’s Col. John McGuiness, project manager for Soldier Equipment.
The pending battlefield use of dosimeters is part of an attempt to build a knowledge base on a condition where statistical data is nonexistent, he said.
In addition to PEO Soldier, the project team includes officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., and MIT.
The Marine Corps is also pursuing a similar effort.
the Army recently sent out training guidance to educate leaders about mild traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
In mid-August, Army equipment officials will begin blast-testing the two separate dosimeters that soldiers will wear in the battlefield. Both of the lightweight devices were selected out of 11 different entries industry submitted as part of an Army request-for-proposal in early July, McGuiness said.
The smaller model, about the size of a silver dollar, weighs less than an ounce and will be mounted inside the Army Combat Helmet beneath the pad that rests on top of the head.
The other model is larger and shaped like a T, McGuiness said. The three-ounce device will be attached to the outside rear of the ACH.
The initial goal is to start outfitting a brigade combat team with the devices by early next year, McGuiness said. The BCT hasn’t been selected yet, but it will most likely be a unit that is training for an upcoming combat deployment, he said.
“We want them to be able to train on this in a field problem,” McGuiness said, explaining that medical personnel will have to be instructed on how to download data from the device.
“This is a version 1.0,” he said. “There is probably going to be some bugs that will have to be worked out.”
Some of these devices may remain on soldier helmets for an entire deployment, while others may be accessed and downloaded when a soldier goes to sick call, McGuiness said.
McGuiness stressed that it’s still too early to predict how the program will evolve.
“We just don’t know what we don’t know yet, but we know we have got to do something,” McGuiness said. “This is the first step into it.”
