Hi Everyone,

I am happy to announce the next talk in our regularly scheduled BME Seminar Series. Please see below for details and and feel free to post/distribute the attached flyer. Also, please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to meet with the speaker, and I will try to work you into her itinerary.

Speaker: Dr. Brittany Coats, PhD (University of Utah) Title: The Effect of the Pia-Arachnoid Complex on Predictions of Traumatic Brain Injury Time: 5:30-6:30 PM Date: Thursday, October 09, 2014 Location: E2-330 Engineering Building (Fort Garry Campus) Abstract: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is often identified by the presence of subdural and/or sub-arachnoid hemorrhages that develop from ruptured cortical vessels during brain-skull displacement. The pia-arachnoid complex (PAC) serves as a mechanical tether between the brain and skull, and likely influences the development of these hemorrhages during head trauma. Finite element (FE) modeling of the head, brain, and skull is used to investigate TBI, but most investigations fail to represent the complex substructures of the PAC. Using an innovative application of optical coherence tomography (OCT), we characterized the variability of the PAC substructure density across the brain and used the microsctructural information to develop a multiscale finite element model for predicting intracranial hemorrhage associated with rapid rotations of the head. This multiscale approach has increased our overall accuracy for predicting hemorrhages in TBI from 80-85% to 94-100%. More importantly, it has improved regional predictions of hemorrhage from 63-88% to 86-100%.

Biosketch: Dr. Brittany Coats is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah, with Adjunct Assistant Professor affiliations in Bioengineering and Pediatrics. She completed her undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah and then went on to earn her PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Her post-doctoral work, evaluating the effect of repetitive head trauma in an animal model, was in collaboration with the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania. Her current research interests focus on characterizing biological structures of the head and eye as they change with age, and identifying how these mechanical changes influence injury.

Sandwiches, refreshments and cake will be provided after the seminar.

To see the list of next scheduled BME seminars, please go to: http://umanitoba.ca/biomedical_engineering/courses/bme_seminars.html

Looking forward to your attendance and continued support for the BME Seminar Series. Chase

-- Chase Figley, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Radiology Health Sciences Centre Winnipeg and University of Manitoba Faculty of Medicine Room GA216 - 820 Sherbrook Street Winnipeg, MB, Canada, R3A 1R9 Office Phone: 204-787-2994 Website: www.figleylab.cahttp://www.figleylab.ca