Citation

Allison MA, Kang YS, Maltese MR, Bolte JH, Arbogast KB. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc. 2014; 46(1): 115-123.

Affiliation

1The Center for Injury Research and Prevention, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, United States; 2University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States; 3Injury Biomechanics Research Laboratory, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States; 4Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, United States.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1249/MSS.0b013e3182a32d0d

PMID

23846161

Abstract

PURPOSE: To quantify differences between head acceleration measured by a helmet-based accelerometer system for ice hockey and an anthropomorphic test device (ATD) in order to validate the system's use in measuring head impacts on-ice. METHODS: A Hybrid III 50th percentile male ATD head and neck was fit with a helmet instrumented with the Head Impact Telemetry (HIT) System for hockey, and impacted at various speeds and directions with different interfaces between the head and helmet. Error between the helmet-based and reference peak accelerations was quantified, and the influence of impact direction and helmet-head interface evaluated. Regression equations were used to reduce error. System-reported impact direction was validated. RESULTS: 19% of impacts were removed from the dataset by a HIT System processing algorithm and were not eligible for analysis. Errors in peak acceleration between the system and ATD varied from 18-31% and 35-64% for linear and rotational acceleration respectively, but were reduced via regression equations. The relationship between HIT System and reference acceleration varied by direction (p < 0.001) and head-helmet interface (p = 0.005). Errors in impact azimuth were approximately 4%, 10%, and 31% for side, back, and oblique back impacts respectively. CONCLUSION: This is the first comprehensive evaluation of peak head acceleration measured by the HIT System for hockey. The HIT System processing algorithm removed 19% of the impacts from the dataset, 2) the correlation between HIT System and reference peak resultant acceleration was strong and varied by head surface and impact direction, and 3) the system error was larger than reported for the 6 degree of freedom HIT System for American football but could be reduced via calibration factors. These findings must be considered when interpreting on-ice data.

Language: en