» Back to Press Release

Media Release
Media Contact:
Amanda Yun
Chew Munkit, Deputy Marketing Manager
Tel: (65) 64665775, Ext. 261
Email: mkchew@wspc.com.sg

The surrogate bruising detection system consists of a sensing skin adapted to a 12 month old child surrogate (anthropomorphic test device - ATD), data acquisition system and computerized body mapping image that dynamically displays impact forces imparted to the ATD during simulated injurious events such as falls or abusive trauma. The system displays and records po-tential locations of bruises caused by impact to the surrogate. (Credit: R Dsouza and G Bertocci - Injury Risk Assessment and Prevention Labora-tory, Department of Bioengineering, University of Louisville).

Child abuse is a leading cause of fatality in children 0-4 years of age. Roughly 1,500 children are fatally injured each year in association with child abuse and 150,000 are permanently disabled. Many serious injuries and fatalities could be prevented if it was possible to distinguish between injuries associated with abuse and those caused by accidents. Clinicians, child protective services and law enforcement personnel should be equipped with improved knowledge related to the types of injuries that are possible from common household accidents that are often falsely reported to be the underlying cause of injury in child abuse. The ability to detect child abuse at its earliest stages has proven to be critical in the prevention of escalating injury severity and even death. Bruising can be an early sign of child abuse, but can also be associated with accidental trauma making it challenging to distinguish between an accident and abuse. However, clinical studies have begun to differentiate bruising characteristics such as location on the body, size and number across accidents and abuse.

A research team from the University of Louisville has developed a force sensing skin that can be adapted to a child surrogate, or test dummy, to identify potential bruising locations during mock laboratory experiments of accidents and abusive events.

"The presence, distribution and location of bruising on a child's body provide a roadmap documenting a child's exposure to impact; this information can be critical in a forensic analysis of a child's injuries," states Gina Bertocci, PhD, senior author of the paper published in TECHNOLOGY.

The system also includes the ability to dynamically display a body image mapping con-tact to the child surrogate along with the magnitude of force of each impact. "Custom force sens-ing arrays were designed and developed to contour to all body regions of the child surrogate to provide a comprehensive roadmap of exposure during laboratory experiments replicating house-hold falls and abusive events", states Raymond D'souza, MS, the paper's lead author and PhD student.

Child surrogates have notoriously been used to study motor vehicle crash events to pre-dict injury risk to the head, chest and femur, but to-date no effort has focused on assessing poten-tial injuries to the skin or soft tissue since these injuries are not deemed to be life-threatening. The research team is in the process of systematically evaluating various factors that influence poten-tial bruising locations on the child surrogate in simulated household falls. They intend to develop a knowledge base of bruising roadmaps associated with a variety of simulated events and to com-pare their findings with clinically based studies.

This study was funded by the National Institute of Justice (Grant No. 2008-DD-BX-K311) and by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Grant No. 2009-DD-BX-0086), Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice. Points of view and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the US Department of Justice.

Corresponding author for this study in TECHNOLOGY is Gina Bertocci, g.bertocci@louisville.edu.

---

About TECHNOLOGY

Fashioned as a high-impact, high-visibility, top-echelon publication, this new ground-breaking journal - TECHNOLOGY - will feature the development of cutting-edge new technologies in a broad array of emerging fields of science and engineering. The content will have an applied science and technological slant with a focus on both innovation and application to daily lives. It will cover diverse disciplines such as health and life science, energy and environment, advanced materials, technology-based manufacturing, information science and technology, and marine and transportations technologies.

About World Scientific Publishing Co.

World Scientific Publishing is a leading independent publisher of books and journals for the scholarly, research, professional and educational communities. The company publishes about 600 books annually and about 140 journals in various fields. World Scientific collaborates with prestigious organisations like the Nobel Foundation and US National Academies Press to bring high quality academic and professional content to researchers and academics worldwide. To find out more about World Scientific, please visit www.worldscientific.com.