Prediction of Mechanisms and Patterns of Human Spine Injuries to High-Velocity Impact Using Numerical Modeling

脊髓损伤是一种致残性疾病，其成本对当今社会来说非常重要。如今，脊髓损伤可在交通、家庭、体育或专业活动中发生。由于脊柱损伤的实验研究仍然是一项艰巨的任务，涉及大量的成本和生物样本，因此有限元（FE）建模是了解脊柱负荷分担变化和识别不同损伤机制的有力工具。此外，交通安全法规中使用的假人解剖结构非常简化，不能准确地代表人体的生物逼真行为。虽然这些假人可以验证身体的整体行为，但它们无法适当地演示在冲击条件下不同身体结构之间的协同作用。本研究拟建立精细且解剖学逼真的人体颈椎和胸骶棘三维有限元模型，包括被动（骨结构、椎间盘和韧带）和主动（肌肉）部件，以研究机动车事故造成的高能量和简单跌落以及正面、侧面和后部碰撞情景下的负荷分担和损伤机制。长期目标是将颈椎和胸骶椎结合起来，研究更常发生在颈椎-胸椎和胸腰椎连接处的运动相关损伤。特别是，目的是确定哪个脊柱结构有损伤的风险，以及在什么负荷速率和方向上可能发生损伤。脊柱模型的建立将丰富脊柱损伤生物力学的研究，这一领域在加拿大尚不发达。准确确定碰撞载荷下脊柱被动和主动部件之间的载荷分配，对于提高车辆安全性能和现行监管损伤标准，以及有效预防、评估和治疗脊柱损伤具有重要意义。研究跌倒、运动和专业活动导致的不同损伤机制，并了解这些损伤背后的机制，对于保护脊柱和开发冲击运动设备至关重要。

Spinal traumas are particularly disabling, their cost is very important for the society nowadays. The spinal injuries can today occur during transportation, domestic, sport or professional activities. Since the experimental investigations of the spinal injuries remain laborious tasks involving important cost and biological samples, the Finite Element (FE) Modeling represents a powerful tool to understand the spinal load-sharing changes and to identify the different injury mechanisms. Moreover, the anatomy of the dummies used in the transportation safety regulations is very simplified and cannot represent accurately the bio-realistic behavior of the human body. Although these dummies permit verifying the global behavior of the body, they are unable to demonstrate properly the synergy between the different body structures under impact conditions. The proposed research consists to create refined and anatomically realistic 3D FE models of the human cervical and thoracosacral spines that include the passive (bony structures, intervertebral discs, and ligaments) and active (muscles) components to investigate the load-sharing and injury mechanisms under high-energy and simple fall as well as frontal, lateral, and rear-impact scenarios caused by Motor Vehicle Accidents. The long-term objective is to combine the cervical and thoracosacral spines together to investigate the sports-related injuries that occur more often at the cervico-thoracic and thoraco-lumbar junctions of the spine. In particular, the aim is to determine which spinal structure is at risk of injury and at what loading rate and direction this injury may occur. The spine models will enrich spinal injury biomechanics research, which is less developed in Canada. Accurate determination of load partitioning among passive and active components of the spine under impact loads is of prime importance in the improvement of vehicle safety features and current regulatory injury criteria, and in the effective prevention, evaluation and treatment of spinal injuries. Studying different injury mechanisms resulting from falling, sports and professional activities and understanding the mechanisms behind these injuries is critical for protecting the spine and development of equipment for impact sports.