Displacement- and Strain-Based Discrimination of Head Injury Models across a Wide Range of Blunt Conditions

Successful validation of a head injury model is critical to ensure its biofidelity. However, there is an ongoing debate on what experimental data are suitable for model validation. Here, we report that CORrelation and Analysis (CORA) scores based on the commonly adopted relative brain-skull displacements or recent marker-based strains from cadaveric head impacts may not be effective in discriminating model-simulated whole-brain strains across a wide range of blunt conditions. We used three versions of the Worcester Head Injury Model (WHIM; isotropic and anisotropic WHIM V1.0, and anisotropic WHIM V1.5) to simulate 19 experiments, including eight high-rate cadaveric impacts, seven mid-rate cadaveric pure rotations simulating impacts in contact sports, and four in vivo head rotation/extension tests. All WHIMs achieved similar average CORA scores based on cadaveric displacement (~ 0.70; 0.47–0.88) and strain (V1.0: 0.86; 0.73–0.97 vs. V1.5: 0.78; 0.62–0.96), using the recommended settings. However, WHIM V1.5 produced ~ 1.17–2.69 times strain of the two V1.0 variants with substantial differences in strain distribution as well (Pearson correlation of ~ 0.57–0.92) when comparing their whole-brain strains across the range of blunt conditions. Importantly, their strain magnitude differences were similar to that in cadaveric marker-based strain (~ 1.32–3.79 times). This suggests that cadaveric strains are capable of discriminating head injury models for their simulated whole-brain strains (e.g., by using CORA magnitude sub-rating alone or peak strain magnitude ratio), although the aggregated CORA may not. This study may provide fresh insight into head injury model validation and the harmonization of simulation results from diverse head injury models. It may also facilitate future experimental designs to improve model validation.