Overview:
Research suggest that blast impacts to the whole body play a major role in the development of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) amongst soldiers. “While the majority of current studies focus on the direct blast-head interaction, the role of whole-body exposure to blast thus multi-organ response in blast-induced TBI remains underestimated”. TBI is a major problem facing troopers of all militaries. In the United States alone, between the periods of 2000-2014, there have been 307,283 cases of TBI . There remains a need for devices that collect data about these events for both research and early detection of TBI. In 2013 a congressional report stated, “More portable data collection instruments are needed”. The Blast Impact Response System (BIMS) is a system developed as a one-year senior design project at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Our objective is to develop a wearable device to be worn by soldiers in the field and upon a blast event, record important information about the blast wave as it impacts the body.