Device measures blast impact to assist wounded soldiers

The device is around the size of a wrist watch and captures blast data, including pressure, resulting head acceleration and time, which can be downloaded after an incident and passed to medics.

‘While the core technology exists, the challenge is customising the capabilities through creative engineering and integrating the components into a single system that provides a practical solution for the military,’ said David Borkholder, an engineer at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) who led the team that designed the device.

When a solider is exposed to a blast, shockwaves can cause a series of complex mechanical and physical reactions in the brain. These blast waves can induce tissue strains and stress, which may result in brain damage. Currently, no experimental data for humans exists to correlate pressure and stress on the brain with an actual explosive event that could assist with predicting brain injury.

With funding from the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the RIT team aimed to develop a solution.