Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA) has long been at the
forefront of research for blast effects on the brain, bringing
together multidisciplinary teams to advance our understanding of
injuries and brain health.
The range of brain
health-related work that has been conducted at ARA over the last 20
years has helped protect the Warfighter and furthers ARA’s vision
to serve as a company that government and industry turn to for
innovative technologies and solutions to critical human problems
that will make our world safer, make us more secure, and make a
difference in our daily lives.
ARA’s research has helped
inform the Blast Overpressure Safety Act, a bipartisan bill that
was recently introduced in congress to direct the Department of
Defense (DoD) to enact several measures to help mitigate and better
protect service members from blast overpressure. The bill also aims
to improve research regarding Warfighter brain health and expand
access to treatment for service members and
veterans.
Efforts by ARA and its
DoD partners also played a role in the creation of DoD Blast
Overpressure Reference and Information Guide (D-BOP-RIG), recently
released by the Defense Health Agency to provide DoD guidance for
managing brain health risks from blast overpressure in
training.
ARA is the key partner
the medical and military communities look to for leading-edge
health solutions, and our team is at the forefront of research into
personal protection and traumatic brain injuries. ARA pairs
innovation with in-depth knowledge of physical, chemical,
physiological, and biological processes to solve complex health
problems.
ARA Principal Engineer
Suthee Wiri, who has a doctorate in chemical engineering, is an
expert in air blast effects, blast environments, and mitigation.
Principal Engineer Christina Wagner, who has a doctorate in
biomechanical engineering, is an expert in blast and biomedical
engineering. Wiri and Wagner answered six questions about blast and
what ARA is doing to investigate and address its harmful
effects.
1.
Can you briefly
explain what air blast
is?
Wiri: Air blast occurs
when energy is suddenly released by detonating high explosive or as
commonly seen in training, burning propellant leaving a gun muzzle.
A blast wave propagates outwards and complex non-linear
interactions occur when the blast wave reaches a service member.
Blast from explosives has been studied for a long time. Recently,
we have spent time studying the blast environment from burning
propellant when service members operate weapon systems. The
team looked at blast around operators during training with
shoulder-fired weapons, mortars, artillery, .50 cal guns, and
explosive breaching charges, to assist researchers studying whether
multiple, sub-threshold exposures can cause negative
outcomes.
2. What are blast
injuries, and who is studying blast effects on the
brain?
Wagner: When exposed to
blast waves, service members may experience Traumatic Brain
Injuries (TBI) and adverse brain health effects. Our service
members are increasingly reporting physical, cognitive, and
psychological symptoms, either after one large explosion or
repeated low-level blast exposures over a career, that affect their
quality of life. At ARA, researchers are working to increase
understanding about the connection between blast exposure and brain
health effects. This relationship is complex and is studied by
multidisciplinary teams from government, academia, and industry
with expertise in blast physics, biomechanics, physiology,
neuroscience, and medicine.
3. What have we learned about the long-
and short-term effects of blast and neurotrauma over the
years?
Wagner: Most critically,
we have identified a plausible correlation between blast exposure
and chronic symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, and cognitive
difficulties even without a TBI diagnosis. Many hypotheses have
been investigated to explain how a shockwave interacts with the
brain, resulting in these negative effects, without a clear answer.
What we are seeing is that blast-induced TBI and its symptoms may
be fundamentally different than concussions from head
impacts.
4. Why have we seen
increased concern related to blast effects over the last
couple
decades?
Wiri: Service member
brain health concerns drive most of the work we have done recently.
Many years ago, DARPA fielded small body-mounted blast sensors and
collected data from combat. This was a big step forward because we
had quantified data (“dose” measurements) on blast exposure levels.
ARA helped analyze the data, and we learned a lot from this data.
In the last few years, we have focused on blast exposure in
training. These events are much lower magnitude blast exposures
than what was typically seen in combat, but the concern was around
low-level repeated blast exposure and possible effects on the
brain.
5. What are some
key milestones in ARA’s long history of blast
research?
Wiri: ARA has long been a
leader in blast research. ARA researchers actually collected
body-mounted blast data during explosive breaching events back in
2006. This effort showed it was possible to collect blast data in
the field. My involvement started with the DARPA blast sensor data
analysis. One thing we learned from this effort and the DARPA Blast
Gauge work was the need to provide standardized blast
metrics from body-mounted blast sensor data. In
cooperation with DoD customers, ARA developed FAST-CT software to
process blast sensor data. FAST-CT uses physics-based algorithms to
take complex blast data with shock reflection, diffraction, and
shielding effects and output standardized blast metrics for each
blast event.
Wagner: FAST-CT has
decades of blast “know how” in the algorithms. But the two major
things FAST-CT does is provide: 1) standardized blast metrics
(incident peak overpressure and incident peak overpressure impulse)
and 2) removal of false positive data. Standardization is important
because when body-mounted sensors were first released, each
research group (often medical researchers rather than people
trained in blast physics) processed data in their own way. This
made it challenging to compare results from different groups. In
other words, we weren’t getting “apples-to-apples” comparisons.
Second is removing false positives. Almost all sensors record data
that is not from a blast event (false positives). In our
experience, this is rare, but it is critical this data is removed
prior to exporting to a service member medical record.
Historically, identifying false positives was done by hand. That is
just not practical if a large number of blast sensors are deployed.
We addressed the issue by writing software to identify false
positives.
6. What current solutions
does ARA offer that can
help expand our collective knowledge about blast
effects, mitigate them, and improve
treatment?
Wagner: Automation and
standardization to process and analyze blast sensor data is
critical. I believe software is the best way to address the “big
data” problem with thousands or even tens of thousands of service
members getting blast sensors to monitor blast exposure. Secondly,
as a community we need to make progress on the “dose/response”
relationship between blast exposure and brain
health.
Wiri: One area I think is
important to consider is training and education to mitigate blast
exposure in training: getting “left of the boom.” Service members
are smart and will take our research such as blast overpressure
contours to reduce their exposure to blast. This can be minor
changes to body position or stepping away from a blast source while
still meeting training goals. As a team, we are dedicated to
continuing our work to provide innovative solutions that further
the body of knowledge surrounding brain health and protect the
Warfighter from the potentially insidious effects of
blast.
About
ARA
Applied Research
Associates, Inc. (ARA) was founded in 1979, in Albuquerque, New
Mexico, to offer science and engineering research to solve problems
of national importance. ARA delivers leading-edge products and
innovative solutions for national defense, energy, homeland
security, aerospace, healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing.
With over 2,000 employee-owners at locations in the U.S. and
Canada, ARA offers a broad range of technical expertise in defense
technologies, civil engineering, computer software and simulation,
systems analysis, biomedical engineering, environmental
technologies, and blast testing and measurement.
Applied Research Associates, Inc.
marketinggroup@ara.com