Preliminary Development and Validation of an Atlas-Based Finite Element Brain Model

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of disability and injury-related death, accounting for nearly one third of all injury-related deaths. To prevent and understand these types of injuries, finite element models can be employed. In this study, an anatomically accurate finite element model was developed from the International Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM) using a voxel-based mesh generation approach. The aim of this study was to compare relative brain displacement of the atlas-based brain model (ABM) to cadaveric data. In these experiments, neutral density targets (NDTs) were implanted in the brain and their relative motion with respect to the skull was recorded. The same boundary conditions were applied to ABM and the relative displacements of the nodes nearest to the physical location of each NDT were computed. Initial simulation and validation show good agreement with experimental data. The data obtained in this study and further development of this model will help us understand the biomechanics of head injury as well as provide a tool to predict and prevent brain injury.