BioLEAP

The diagnose of Abusive Head Trauma (AHT) in infants is very challenging and highly controversial today. The injury mechanism is still a myth; the central concern of the myth is a biomechanical problem that requires further research efforts.

The project BioLEAP aims at investigating the fundamental injury mechanisms of AHT in infants and developing a platform to provide scientific evidences supporting case-specific forensic investigations. Advanced finite element (FE) model of infants with detailed anatomical structures will be used.

The project will integrate the state-of-the-art FE head models developed from our pilot studies and the methodologies on whole body child modelling from an on-going project. The integration ensures a fast generation of age-specific whole body FE models positioned to a pre-fall position according to the described history by the caregiver.

A novel convenient method to obtain the material properties of the impact surface will be developed. Such an integrated effort is a critical step to bring the research outcomes towards a reliable platform providing support for case-specific forensic investigations.

The research team includes biomechanics researchers and forensic specialists, who are already working closely in the pilot studies, and will continue to do so. The project will ultimately lead to a better protection for the most venerable children, equally important, the number of wrongful convictions to innocent parents/caretakers will be decreased.

Contacts

This project is funded by Swedish Research Council (VR) under contract number 2016-04203 (2017-2020).