NOVEMBER 16, 2021 — Football players at a local high school are benefitting from innovative concussion research developed by the UTSA College of Engineering and Integrated Design. With expertise in concussion and helmet design, assistant professor Marzieh Hajiaghamemar and assistant professor of research Morteza Seidi of the UTSA Department of Biomedical Engineering are combining their knowledge to come up with an innovative approach to better understand, detect and protect players from concussions.
“Traumatic brain injury happens a lot, but there still aren’t any techniques that assess and monitor the risk of concussions in a timely manner or helmet designs that effectively mitigate them. That led us to want to learn more about what happens inside the brain,” said Hajiaghamemar, the principal investigator.
Their novel concussion detection approach involves three steps: researchers collect data from football players; a proprietary computer model analyzes the information; and biomarker testing measures elevated protein levels that occur with concussion-level brain trauma.
