Validation performance comparison for finite element models of the human brain

Abstract

The objective of this study was to compare the performance of six validated brain finite element (FE) models to localized brain motion validation data in five experimental configurations. Model performance was measured using the objective metric CORA (CORrelation and Analysis), where higher ratings represent better correlation. The KTH model achieved the highest average CORA rating, and the ABM received the highest average rating among models robustly validated against five cadaver impacts in three directions. This technique can be more frequently employed to build better models and, when associated limitations are well understood, to compare inter-model performance under similar conditions.

Keywords:

• Brain model
• head injury
• validation
• optimization
• finite element model
• CORA

Acknowledgments

All simulations were run on the DEAC Cluster at Wake Forest University. The authors would like to thank the ANSIR lab for providing the ICBM labelmaps, the THUMS and GHBMC teams at Wake Forest University for providing the respective head models, and Elizabeth Lillie for her work on the MATLAB code to produce the ABM mesh from the labelmaps.