Computational Simulation and Visualization of Traumatic Brain Injuries

We numerically model the human brain dynamics in realistic 2D cross-sections during traumatic scenarios corresponding to the Head Injury Criterion’s critical value HIC36=1000. Our simulations are based on the Kelvin-Voigt Partial Differential Equations that treat the brain tissue as a viscoelastic solid and on our nonlinear generalization of these linear PDEs that treats the tissue as an incompressible, viscoelastic fluid. To better visualize and study the brain motion, we have developed curved-vector-field plots and movies, which allow the simultaneous analysis of velocity fields with a wide range of magnitudes (as appear in turbulent flows) as well as the corresponding trajectories of brain-matter parcels. The discovered complex brain tissue oscillations shed new light on the mechanisms of Closed Head Injuries. Our results may help establish a universal brain injury tolerance criterion.