Concussions in Sports
Concussions are extremely common amongst athletes in high impact sports. Early detection and treatment is crucial for recovery. Many concussions go undiagnosed and players continue to play, placing them at a higher risk. Providing data to medical proffesionals to effectively track athletes over a game and over a season is important to monitor concussive and sub-concussive impacts.
Symptoms of Concussion
Symptoms may include headaches, confusion, dizziness, memory loss, personality changes, and even psychological and mental health issues.
Concussion Stats
According to a CDC estimate approximately 3.8 million sports-related concussions occur annually in the United States. Additionally, according to the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine approximately 50% of concussions go undiagnosed.
Head Impacts
Concussive impacts have average linear accelerations of 98 ± 28 g and angular accelerations of 6432 ± 1813 rad/s^2. Sub-concussive impacts had average linear accelerations of 57 ± 22 g and angular accelerations of 4029 ± 1438 rad/s^2.
The goal of Impact Health is to proactively detect forces to the head that could potentially result in concussions in real time in athletes who participate in high impact sports.
Main objectives of project include:
- Continuously detect head impacts in real time and store the data for quantitative analysis by medical professionals
- Communicate with third party device about potentially dangerous instances
- Comfortable for players to wear
Impact HealthSmart Headband
The Impact Health Smart Headband is flexible and adaptible as it can be used for different sport applications. When an athlete has experienced an impact above a predetermined threshold the device sends an alert to a third party. The headband comes with a detachable pocket sealed with velcro so that the user can wash the headband as normal. The features of the headband include:
- One accelerometer
- One gyroscope
- One FSR
- ESP-WROOM-32 microcontroller
- Rechargable batteries
Product Features
Adaptible
The design can easily be worn under different helmets.
Early Detection
Provides data to help medical staff detect concussions early in players.
Alert Feature
Ability to alert a third party when impact has exceeded a certain threshold that is indicative of a concussion.
Easy to Use
Impact Health platform focusses on improving user design.
Long Battery Life
Battery can last a minimum of 3 hours (Football and Hockey games average 90 minutes).
Withstand External Environment
Product can withstand an outdoor environment (Heat, precipitation, sweat etc.)
Washable
Headband comes with detachable pocket sealed with velcro so that user can wash the headband as normal
Cloud Storage
User data will be saved on the cloud.
Impact Health Web App
Team Members
Hardware Support
Selina Hsu
Hardware Support
Rachel Du
Software Support
Laila Hashi
