High-Tech Helmets
From: NASA Tech Briefs Insider - 10/02/2007

The University of Illinois (UI) at Urbana-Champaign and Unity High School in
Tolono, IL, have teamed with Simbex, a research and product-development
company in New Hampshire, to develop a system inside a football helmet that
monitors head injuries. It works in tandem with helmets made by Riddell, and
was first tested on the Virginia Tech football team in 2002. Unity is the
only high school in the nation using the Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS). 

The system uses six strategically placed, spring-loaded accelerometers to
wirelessly beam information to a Web-based system on a laptop computer on the
sidelines. It more immediately detects when blows to players' heads may
result in concussions or more severe brain injuries. Impact data, including
location of hits, magnitude of force, and length of hits, is recorded for
analysis by a UI research team. 

At Unity, each varsity player was given a baseline assessment for
neurocognitive function prior to the start of the season. On the field during
practice or a game, when the encoder in an athlete's helmet registers a hit,
the system beams impact information to the sideline laptop, which is
monitored by the team's trainer. If a player is diagnosed with a concussion,
he will not return to play until neurocognitive function returns to baseline
performance. 

The purpose of the research is to look at how hard and where players get hit,
which could determine the need to develop a different type of helmet. At
Unity, the system has already picked up one athlete who was hitting with the
top of his head, a practice that could result in spinal-cord injury. Because
they were able to identify the pattern, the team's coaches were able to work
with the athlete to correct it. 

Read the entire article at:
High school footballers wearing special helmets to monitor brain injuries
http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/07/0927helmets.html

Links:
The Department of Kinesiology and Community Health
http://www.kch.uiuc.edu/

Steven Broglio
http://www.kch.uiuc.edu/staff/broglio.htm

Brain Injury Research Laboratory
http://www.kch.uiuc.edu/labs/brain-injury/default.htm

Football helmets detect brain injuries
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/115269.html

Head Impact Telemetry System
http://www.simbex.com/products/HITS.html

Note: I recall Tom O'Day, an engineer at Northwestern University Hospital in
Evanston, IL who I believe was the first to instrument a football helmet with
an accelerometer. He measured collisions in excess of 50g. - Dave Jaffe