Injury analysis of a head subjected to the lateral rotational impact related to the mechanism of diffuse axonal injury using the voxel head model

The simulation of the head subjected to a lateral rotational impact was conducted to understand the mechanism of the diffuse axonal injury (DAI). It is known that the diffuse axonal injiury frequently occurs in motor vehicle accidents. Gennarelli et al. proposed that DAT occurs while a head is subjected to rather a lateral rotational impact than an anterior-posterior or oblique impact. The obtained result shows that the higher stress occurred in deep area of brain near the leading edge of a falx cerebri and tentorium cerebelli. It was confirmed that the greater stress areas of the brain matched the fact that DAT often involve the injury in a corpus callosum and a brain stem. Moreover, the localization of brain function in the higher stress areas corresponds to the residual disability in DAT. We expect that the injury in a brain stem and cerebral limbic system is the essential of DAT.