Low Cost Blast Test Surrogate

Blast-induced Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a major threat to the health of military personnel serving in modern theaters. TBI incidence rates in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom approached 3% of all deployed personnel. TBI has become known as the “signature” injury of these conflicts. Blast overpressure can also damage the lungs and rupture the eardrums. Development and evaluation of personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect the warfighter from blast injury requires human surrogates. Today’s surrogates are either anatomically inaccurate (and fit PPE poorly) or are prohibitively expensive. Creare, proposes to create the Modular Instrumented Torso and Head Surrogate (MITHS). The MITHS will provide a low-cost, biofidelic, and modular solution for evaluating blast injury risk and personal protective equipment performance. The MITHS features biofidelic brain, lung, eye, ear, and skeleton phantoms, blast-relevant instrumentation, and integrated wireless data acquisition. In Phase I we will demonstrate a proof-of-concept MITHS and develop a roadmap for Phases II and III design and cost-reduction efforts. In Phase II we will fabricate and demonstrate a fully functional MITHS. In Phase III we will leverage economies of scale and assembly line techniques to produce and sell the MITHS.