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  • Originally posted by Eeyore View Post
    One thing that might help is to put padding on the outside of helmets as well as the inside. The way they are designed now, when two helmets collide, the entire head/helmet combination comes to an abrupt stop, and the internal padding is trying to keep the head from decelerating at the same rate that the helmet does. External padding would reduce the entire structure's deceleration rate.
    Many, many years ago, long, long before CTE was even known, a football helmet manufacturer designed a helmet just like this -- with soft padding on the outside. It never got past the prototype phase because they were concerned teams would never buy them.

    Why? Because you wouldn't be able to display your team logo on the outside of the helmet. I kid you not.
    Russell Jaslow
    [Former] SUNYAC Correspondent
    U.S. College Hockey Online

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    • Re: Concussions

      Article on concussion detection:

      PupilScreen aims to allow parents, coaches, medics to detect concussion, TBIs with a phone

      September 6, 2017 by Jennifer Langston





      PupilScreen aims to allow parents, coaches, medics to detect concussion, TBIs with a phone
      The UW researchers initially tested PupilScreen with a 3-D printed box that controls the eye's exposure to light. They are now training their deep learning algorithms to produce similar results with the smartphone camera alone. Credit: Dennis Wise/University of Washington

      University of Washington researchers are developing the first smartphone app that is capable of objectively detecting concussion and other traumatic brain injuries in the field: on the sidelines of a sports game, on a battlefield or in the home of an elderly person prone to falls.





      PupilScreen can detect changes in a pupil's response to light using a smartphone's video camera and deep learning tools—a type of artificial intelligence—that can quantify changes imperceptible to the human eye.

      This pupillary light reflex has long been used to assess whether a patient has severe traumatic brain injury, and recent research finds it can be useful in detecting milder concussions—opening up an entirely new avenue for screening.

      The team of UW computer scientists, electrical engineers and medical researchers has demonstrated that PupilScreen can be used to detect instances of significant traumatic brain injury. A broader clinical study this fall will put PupilScreen in the hands of coaches, emergency medical technicians, doctors and others to gather more data on which pupillary response characteristics are most helpful in determining ambiguous cases of concussion. The researchers hope to release a commercially available version of PupilScreen within two years.

      "Having an objective measure that a coach or parent or anyone on the sidelines of a game could use to screen for concussion would truly be a game-changer," said Shwetak Patel, the Washington Research Foundation Endowed Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and of Electrical Engineering at the UW. "Right now the best screening protocols we have are still subjective, and a player who really wants to get back on the field can find ways to game the system."

      As described in a paper to be presented Sept. 13 at Ubicomp 2017, PupilScreen can assess a patient's pupillary light reflex almost as well as a pupilometer, an expensive and rarely used machine found only in hospitals. It uses the smartphone's flash to stimulate the patient's eyes and the video camera to record a three-second video.



      The video is processed using deep learning algorithms that can determine which pixels belong to the pupil in each video frame and measure the changes in pupil size across those frames. In a small pilot study that combined 48 results from patients with traumatic brain injury and from healthy people, clinicians were able to diagnose the brain injuries with almost perfect accuracy using the app's output alone.

      In amateur sports today, even the best practices that coaches or parents use if an athlete is suspected of a concussion during a game—asking them where they are, to repeat a list of words, balancing, touching a finger to their nose—essentially consist of subjective assessment.

      By contrast, PupilScreen aims to generate objective and clinically relevant data that anyone on the sidelines could use to determine whether a player should be further assessed for concussion or other brain injury.




      The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates about half of the 3.8 million concussions per year in the U.S. from recreational sports injuries alone still go undiagnosed, putting millions of young players and adults at risk for future head injury and permanent cognitive deficits.

      Historically, there's been no surefire way to diagnose concussion—even in the emergency room, said co-author Dr. Lynn McGrath, a resident physician in UW Medicine's Department of Neurological Surgery. Doctors usually run tests to rule out worst cases like a brain bleed or skull fracture. After more serious head injuries are excluded, a diagnosis of concussion can be made.

      Medical professionals have long used the pupillary light reflex—usually in the form of a penlight test where they shine a light into a patient's eyes—to assess severe forms of brain injury. But a growing body of medical research has recently found that more subtle changes in pupil response can be useful in detecting milder concussions.

      "PupilScreen aims to fill that gap by giving us the first capability to measure an objective biomarker of concussion in the field," McGrath said. "After further testing, we think this device will empower everyone from Little League coaches to NFL doctors to emergency department physicians to rapidly detect and triage head injury."


      PupilScreen aims to allow parents, coaches, medics to detect concussion, TBIs with a phone
      PupilScreen combines a smartphone's flash and video camera with machine learning tools to track how the eye's pupil reacts to light. The app can currently distinguish between the pupillary light reflex of healthy people (shown above) and …more

      While the UW team initially tested PupilScreen with a 3-D printed box to control the eye's exposure to light, researchers are now training their machine learning neural network to produce similar results with the smartphone camera alone.

      "The vision we're shooting for is having someone simply hold the phone up and use the flash. We want every parent, coach, caregiver or EMT who is concerned about a brain injury to be able to use it on the spot without needing extra hardware," said lead author Alex Mariakakis, a doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

      One of the challenges in developing PupilScreen involved training the machine learning tools to distinguish between the eye's pupil and iris, which involved annotating roughly 4,000 images of eyes by hand. A computer has the advantage of being able to quantify subtle changes in the pupillary light reflex that the human eye cannot perceive.

      "Instead of designing an algorithm to solve the specific problem of measuring pupil response, we moved this to a machine learning approach—collecting a lot of data and writing an algorithm that allowed the computer to learn for itself," said co-author Jacob Baudin, a UW medical student and doctoral student in physiology and biophysics.

      The PupilScreen researchers are currently working to identify partners interested in conducting additional field studies of the app, which they expect to begin in October.

      Explore further: Know the signs of concussion



      Provided by: University of Washington search and more info website




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      Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-09-pupils...ssion.html#jCp

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      • Re: Concussions

        Something else for parents to think about and for young athletes to consider...

        http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/football-age-1.4306067

        Comment


        • Re: Concussions

          This is terrible...a concussion jackpot!!

          http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-br...tans-1.4355765

          Comment


          • Re: Concussions

            The numbers are getting to the point where they are off the chart...

            http://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/co...etes-1.4364498

            Comment


            • Re: Concussions

              Originally posted by Blackbeard View Post
              The numbers are getting to the point where they are off the chart...

              http://www.cbc.ca/sports/olympics/co...etes-1.4364498
              Human bodies were never meant to take the forces these kids can generate. I hope someone is working very hard to find prevention because the athletes themselves are not going to stop.

              Comment


              • Re: Concussions

                On helmets in girls’/women’s lacrosse:

                https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/s....html?emc=eta1

                Interesting from a number of perspectives, given the lacrosse background of many of our players, including the “staunch and unswerving” pushback from some college coaches “who view headgear as a threat to the integrity and spirit of the girls’ game.”

                Comment


                • Re: Concussions

                  https://concussionfoundation.org/med...-pledge-brains

                  Comment


                  • Re: Concussions

                    FDA approves blood test for concussions.

                    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/h...bloodtest.html

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by thirdtime's . . . View Post
                      FDA approves blood test for concussions.

                      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/h...bloodtest.html
                      Great. Hope it eventually comes in a small hand unit can't can be used by high schools and high-powered youth teams.
                      CCT '77 & '78
                      4 kids
                      5 grandsons (BCA 7/09, CJA 5/14, JDL 8/14, JFL 6/16, PJL 7/18)
                      1 granddaughter (EML 4/18)

                      ”Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
                      - Benjamin Franklin

                      Banned from the St. Lawrence University Facebook page - March 2016 (But I got better).

                      I want to live forever. So far, so good.

                      Comment


                      • Re: Concussions

                        This article about the different responses of the NHL and NFL to CTE–related lawsuits includes this interesting fact:

                        “For now, the N.H.L. [in its stonewalling] may have calculated correctly. The league has not seen a dramatic decline in attendance or television ratings, though its national television audiences have long been the lowest of the four largest North American professional leagues. Participation has steadily grown, a sign that parents are not so worried about the safety of ice hockey that they are steering their children into other sports." [italics added]

                        https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/s...y-bettman.html

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by thirdtime's . . . View Post
                          This article about the different responses of the NHL and NFL to CTE–related lawsuits includes this interesting fact:

                          “For now, the N.H.L. [in its stonewalling] may have calculated correctly. The league has not seen a dramatic decline in attendance or television ratings, though its national television audiences have long been the lowest of the four largest North American professional leagues. Participation has steadily grown, a sign that parents are not so worried about the safety of ice hockey that they are steering their children into other sports." [italics added]

                          https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/24/s...y-bettman.html
                          I have a son who has had 4 documented concussions. 2 in HS and 2 in college. So far, no long term consequences, and I pray it stays that way
                          CCT '77 & '78
                          4 kids
                          5 grandsons (BCA 7/09, CJA 5/14, JDL 8/14, JFL 6/16, PJL 7/18)
                          1 granddaughter (EML 4/18)

                          ”Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”
                          - Benjamin Franklin

                          Banned from the St. Lawrence University Facebook page - March 2016 (But I got better).

                          I want to live forever. So far, so good.

                          Comment


                          • Re: Concussions

                            News for kids.

                            https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/17/w...uidelines.html
                            Last edited by thirdtime's . . .; 11-03-2019, 08:44 AM.

                            Comment


                            • Re: Concussions

                              Fascinating read on what concussions have done to a player some of you may remember from his playing days at Michigan State as well in the NHL.

                              https://www.freep.com/story/sports/c...gs/1565171002/
                              At the outset, we could hang with the dude...

                              Comment


                              • Re: Concussions

                                Originally posted by FiveHoleFrenzy View Post
                                Fascinating read on what concussions have done to a player some of you may remember from his playing days at Michigan State as well in the NHL.

                                https://www.freep.com/story/sports/c...gs/1565171002/
                                Wrong to blame this on concussions. For every reach to blame things on concussions and cte there are many more stories of normal lives. Its conslusion jumping, click bait etc. Still in such and early stage of understanding concussions as to how why which when and the effects.

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