Road trauma is a leading cause of death and disabling injury, for both adults and children. We are studying how these injuries occur, and how changes to the types and design of restraints used by children and passengers in the rear seat of cars can reduce serious injuries and death. Key problems include whether children use restraints correctly and whether they use restraints that are appropriate for their size, and whether the rear seat restraints perform as well as those for front seat passengers.
Magnetic Resonance Elastography - we are using a new MRI technique to measure the stiffness of the brain, muscles and other tissues. The stiffness changes with age and in some diseases, so this research may help us develop better methods of diagnosis.
Effects of mechanical loads on the nervous system - We are studying how mechanical forces affect the tissues of the human nervous system. This research ranges from spinal cord & peripheral nerve injury to chronic conditions such as syringomyelia and hydrocephalus.
Upper airway biomechanics – we are studying the mechanical properties and motion of muscles that surround the upper airway and how these change in sleep apnoea patients.
We are interested in how the body’s tissues respond to mechanical forces – this includes both situations where these forces might cause injury, such as in a car crash, or when a nerve is compressed, but also in how mechanical forces are part of normal function. To understand the differences between injuries between children and adults, we need to know about how their body tissues are different, including their size, but also how much load they can tolerate, how stiff they are, and how these factors, along with developmental changes, affect the types of injury that children sustain. This has been a major factor in understanding the mechanisms of spinal injury in children, and also in understanding how to improve the restraints used by children in car crashes.
We can use techniques such as our new MRI technique MR elastography, to measure the stiffness of body tissues in live human subjects, in ways that have previously been impossible. This has applications not only in understanding differences in body tissues with age, but there are also changes in tissue stiffness in some diseases, such as cancer. The latter is what allows women to detect breast cancer lumps, for example. We are using this to examine changes in brain tissue in hydrocephalus and brain cancer, and also in muscles after injury.
Road trauma is a leading cause of death and disabling injury, for both adults and children. We are studying how these injuries occur, and how changes to the types and design of restraints used by children and passengers in the rear seat of cars can reduce serious injuries and death. Key problems include whether children use restraints correctly and whether they use restraints that are appropriate for their size, and whether the rear seat restraints perform as well as those for front seat passengers.
Magnetic Resonance Elastography - we are using a new MRI technique to measure the stiffness of the brain, muscles and other tissues. The stiffness changes with age and in some diseases, so this research may help us develop better methods of diagnosis.
Effects of mechanical loads on the nervous system - We are studying how mechanical forces affect the tissues of the human nervous system. This research ranges from spinal cord & peripheral nerve injury to chronic conditions such as syringomyelia and hydrocephalus.
Upper airway biomechanics – we are studying the mechanical properties and motion of muscles that surround the upper airway and how these change in sleep apnoea patients.
