The Filum Terminale: A Cadaver Study of Anatomy, Histology, and Elastic Properties.

Background: The filum terminale is a fibrous band, consisting of the filum terminale internum (FTI), connecting the conus medullaris (CM) with the dural sac (DS), and the filum terminale externum (FTE), connecting the DS with the coccyx. Despite its importance in tethered cord syndrome, published anatomic and physiologic data on the filum terminale remain scarce. We describe 1) the dimensions and position of the FTI and FTE; 2) the histology of the FTI-DS-FTE transition zone; and 3) the extensibility and elastic properties of the FTI and the CM.

The biomechanical behaviour of the bridging vein-superior sagittal sinus complex with implications for the mechanopathology of acute subdural haematoma.

Background: Traumatic brain injury is expected to become the major cause of death and disability for children and young adults by the year 2020. One of the most frequent and most morbid pathologies resulted from a head trauma is acute subdural haematoma (ASDH). For nearly one third of the ASDH cases the etiopathology directly relates to a bridging vein (BV) rupture.

The relation between mechanical impact parameters and most frequent bicycle related head injuries.

The most frequent head injuries resulting from bicycle accidents include skull fracture acute subdural hematoma (ASDH), cerebral contusions, and diffuse axonal injury (DAI). This review includes epidemiological studies, cadaver experiments, in vivo imaging, image processing techniques, and computer reconstructions of cycling accidents used to estimate the mechanical parameters leading to specific head injuries. The results of the head impact tests suggest the existence of an energy failure level for the skull fracture, specific for different impact regions (22-24J for the frontal site and 5-15J for temporal site).

Assessment of relative brain-skull motion in quasistatic circumstances by magnetic resonance imaging.

Brain-skull relative motion plays a pivotal role in the etiology of traumatic brain injury (TBI). The present study aims to assess brain-skull relative motion in quasistatic circumstances, and to correlate cortical regions with high motion amplitudes with sites prone to cerebral contusions. The study includes 30 healthy volunteers scanned using a clinical 3-T MR scanner in four different head positions.

Numerical simulation of the insertion process of an uncemented hip prosthesis in order to evaluate the influence of residual stress and contact distribution on the stem initial stability.

The long-term success of a cementless total hip arthroplasty depends on the implant geometry and interface bonding characteristics (fit, coating and ingrowth) and on stem stiffness. This study evaluates the influence of stem geometry and fitting conditions on the evolution and distribution of the bone-stem contact, stress and strain during and after the hip stem insertion, by means of dynamic finite element techniques. Next, the influence of the mechanical state (bone-stem contact, stress and strain) resulted from the insertion process on the stem initial resistance to subsidence is investigated.