Head impact biomechanics across men's and women's contact sports: a comparative and clustering analysis.

ABSTRACT: Sports head impacts have been associated with both acute and long-term brain trauma. While wearable sensors provide valuable biomechanics insight, most studies focus on single sports, and the variability in sensor methodologies limits cross-sport comparisons. Our objectives were to conduct a multisport comparison and clustering of head impact biomechanics features implicated in brain injury risk. We uniformly processed a multisport dataset gathered using instrumented mouthguards containing direct head impacts in men's football, men's hockey, women's rugby, and women's soccer. We statistically compared directional and resultant peak kinematics, impulse durations, and impact directionality metrics. Then, we applied unsupervised k-means and t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding (t-SNE)

SUBMITTER: Masood Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12800157 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature