(intense music)
- A concussion are always a shaking
of your brain tissue inside the skull bone.
But it doesn't say where you have hurt yourself
in most of the cases.
- If you've purchased or looked at buying a new helmet
over recent years there's a chance you would have seen
something called MIPS.
MIMPS, if you aren't aware,
is a product that was launched in 2007.
And has since sold over nine million of their devices.
But, what is MIPS?
What is it designed to do?
And how was it developed?
I've been invited out here, to Sweden,
to find out exactly that.
(mellow electronic music)
As cyclists, most of us have had,
or may have in the future, a crash.
And that includes myself.
We may experience what is referred to as a concussion.
The symptoms of concussion are visible.
But what does having a concussion actually mean?
What really does it look like inside the brain?
To find out, we spoke to Hans.
A neurosurgeon and co-founder of MIPS.
- Concussion that is a general word
for shaking the brain tissue inside the skull.
Concussion means a lots of things.
But you have to be aware of the fact that
around 80 percent of the concussions are mild.
While 10 percent is moderate,
and the rest is severe head injuries.
All these categories are included in concussion.
So when you get an answer from your colleagues,
or whatever, that you have received a concussion,
it doesn't say so much.
Concussion may, are always,
a shaking of your brain tissue inside the skull bone.
But it doesn't say where you have hurt yourself
in most of the cases.
Now if you go with a mild head injury due to a concussion
and do perform a CT scan or an MRI scan
then you probably don't see anything.
However, if you have the moderate to severe head injury,
that is also a concussion, then you will see lots of things.
But the vast majority of concussions are
due to mild head injury which you cannot define.
That's how I would look upon it.
(upbeat music)
- I am now joined by Peter Halldin, the co-founder of MIPS.
Who I'm going to ask a few tough questions today, hopefully.
And find a few answers that I don't yet know.
So Peter, talk to me about how MIPS started?
What was day one?
What did that look like?
- Well it all started when I first met with Hans Van Holst,
brain surgeon, and he asked me if I wanted to start a PhD.
And I wasn't really sure if I wanted to do that.
But I told Hans that well I'll give it a try.
And we started reading about the anatomy
and the human head and the brain.
Hans wanted to know about that but I didn't.
So I said to Hans, "So maybe we can use the safety system
"that we have in our head in the brain.
"Where the brain can slide inside of the skull.
"In the cerebral spinal fluid."
So, and Hans said, "Well, I think that's a great idea."
So we started to work around that idea
and figure out if it could be possible
to use it in a helmet.
And at that time we didn't really know
so much about helmets.
How our helmets are tested or how we fall from a bicycle
or a motor cycle.
But looking into real accident situations,
looking into how helmets are tested today.
Helmets are tested only for pure vertical drop.
Measuring only the linear acceleration.
And we understood quite at once,
well we had something great in this idea
which could reduce the rotational forces
otherwise transmitted to your brain.
As your brain is more sensitive to rotation.
And you get this rotation
when you fall at an angle to the ground.
So it was, kind of,
putting pieces to pieces together in a puzzle.
With the information that is told about.
And from that we understood that there is a big,
great idea, and we can probably make a big change.
And reduce the number of injuries.
You've mentioned today something called rotational motion.
Which is a phrase I've never heard before.
What exactly is rotational motion?
And how is the device that you've created and designed
reducing the injuries that are caused by that?
- I think, to understand rotation,
you can take the boxer for example.
They can stand hitting each other round after round,
from the straight hits.
And then suddenly they'll get an upper cut,
they get the rotation.
And then that's when they are knocked out.
So the human head and the brain
is much more sensitive for this rotation
then a linear motion, kind of.
So what we have done within the MIPS helmet
is when you fall to the ground at an angle
the helmet will grab into the ground,
and you get that rotation of the helmet.
And as the forces are so high,
the helmet will transmit this rotation to the head.
What we do in the MIPS helmet
is that we have a sliding layer
that can move in all directions, 10 to 15 millimeters.
So what happens is that we're mimicking actually
that you fall on ice.
So if you fall on ice the head will just continue
in the direction it was supposed to go.
Instead of grabbing in and rotate.
That is what we have in this sliding layer.
So we have a very low coefficient of friction surface here
between this layer and the helmet.
And then we redirect the energy from rotation
to translation.
And that's how we reduce the rotational motion
to the head and the brain.
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- So how long has it taken to finalize the design
that you're currently using?
And are you constantly developing
for new designs going forwards?
Or is this now the design that's going to work forever?
- We still develop new systems.
We still learn about head injuries.
Concussion, for example,
is an injury which is just a name for a symptom.
Still there's a lot of research to be made to understand
exactly what is damaged into the brain.
But the only thing we know today
is that concussion and other sever brain injuries
are caused by this rotational motion of the head.
And what we actually do,
the only thing we do with the MIPS helmet,
and the different MIPS products,
is that we reduce the rotational energy
transmitted to the brain.
So it's still if we don't
exactly know on what kind of force I need to hit you with
for you to get a concussion.
We know that less impact is better
for your head and the brain.
And that is what we are doing in the MIPS helmet.
(upbeat electronic music)
- I'm not quite sure if I should describe this room
as a test lab, as an office space,
or as a multifunctional gym room.
Because look at this,
they've got everything you could ever need
to work out at MIPS.
Which I'm guessing they do on they're lunch breaks.
They've got the weight bench.
You've got some sort of stepping machine, rowing machine.
And then there are loads of balance boards and gym balls.
Loads of cords.
And then the important bit, which is all the bikes.
They've got another room over there
which is full of mountain bikes as well.
A couple of spin bikes as well.
And then when you've finished working out at MIPS
there's really cool room where you got to go to.
There's only one place to go.
That's the massage room.
It's two minutes to four,
so I'm a little bit early for my four o'clock appointment.
But I can't wait to have a massage.
(mellow electronic music)
Down there is there MIPS global test center
and I'm going to go down and meet
the head of product development, Marcus Seyffarth.
Who's going to talk me through the product testing protocol.
And he's also going to demonstrate exactly how it works.
And apparently he's going to be using a head
which bears an uncanny resemblance in shape and size,
to mine.
(mellow electronic music)
Right, I'm in the test lab now.
And I'm joined by Marcus the first,
who is head of product development.
I'm calling Marcus, Marcus the first,
because he's one of five Marcus' here at MIPS.
And you're going to talk us through the test protocol,
how you test the helmets.
And you're going to show us a few tests, aren't you?
- Yeah, yup.
So we're at the MIPS headquarters in Stockholm.
This is the Halldin test rig that we're using
whenever we test helmets for production and approval.
We also use it for creating new products, of course.
And I'll just show you a couple of the tests.
Quickly, what we're testing for is rotational.
So we're testing towards an angled anvil, a 45 degree angle.
A bike helmet we're testing
at three different impact locations.
We're testing it, if my hand is the anvil,
we're testing it in this test point, which is the front.
To make sure that the MIPS, which is omnidirectional,
can move in all directions.
But we're making sure that it's moving freely
in this direction by this test.
We're testing in this direction
which we call this the lateral.
Of course, testing that MIPS brain protection system
moves in this direction.
And then finally we test it in a, what we call,
pitched impact.
Pretty much a head on crash.
- The sort of thing you'd see in real life.
- Exactly.
So, an impact in this location of the helmet.
Where most of the cycling accidents, I would say, happen.
- Okay, can I pick up your test head?
'cause I remember from a minute ago,
this thing weighs a ton.
Apparently it's the size, well it is the size,
it's a 58 cm head this one, isn't it.
Which is my own actual head size.
And it's meant to be actual weight as well.
In which case, I can't believe how strong my neck is.
Because that is not light is it?
- That's 42 kg.
- Right.
- We have different test heads for different helmet sizes.
So of course, we have a medium size,
we have a child size, extra large size as well.
All equipped with accelerometer system inside of them
to gather the data.
But also a gyro,
to make sure that we have to helmet positioned correctly
before setting up every test.
- Okay, right, I'll give you that.
- Okay, you can place it inside of the helmet.
So, when we test we try and have it
as you would use the helmet normally.
So you would tighten the chin strap comfortable.
You wouldn't?
- I have mine very comfortably.
You know, flapping around down there somewhere.
- Position it so that the nose to the rim of the helmet
is in a good way, normal.
We would have this small tool
to make sure that it's correctly aligned
according to the specifications of the helmet.
Every helmet actually has a specification for that distance.
Once that's done, fit system tightened securely,
put it in the test rig.
And the test rig would know from my scanning,
what height, what impact location, and everything.
The instrumentation has a connection to this application
that tells us what's the actually location of the head.
So that when testing we can have the exact same set up
when testing the original helmet
and the MIPS version of the helmet.
Once I have the readings,
the numbers that I would like it to have,
I just put the lever on that keeps the head in place
and the helmet in place during the free falling part
before the impact.
The lever release is just 50 cm above the anvil.
Then I'm good to go.
Off to the computer press the button to raise it up
and then drop it.
(intense electronic music)
- Right, so the test was over there,
and the results are here, is that right?
- Yes.
So all the test data zoom through the cable to the computer
and then onto this program.
So basically what we see here is the linear accelerations.
And as you see on the video, is the slow mo from the impact.
So this is 1,000 frames per second slow mo.
We could do it frame by frame if you would like to
do a quick analysis.
Also compare the two versions side by side, and all that.
- Okay.
- And in the graphs there,
you can see the yellow green and white lines
are the different x, y, z, parameters.
And between these lines it's five milliseconds.
So as you can see it's quite short amount of time.
- Yeah, considering it takes 100 milliseconds the blink,
roughly. - Exactly.
- That's, the impacts over,
before you even realized it's happened basically.
- Yeah, so basically that's,
it's a very short amount of time
that you have to potentially save your life.
- So this impact would be over in maybe 8 milliseconds.
I can show you some other parts of this as well.
We could see the angular acceleration
and the angular velocity.
Same components that you have, the green white and yellow.
The angular velocity is what we see correlate to strain
and the tearing of the brain tissue mostly.
- And it's exactly that
that the MIPS system is designed to irradiate, isn't it?
- Exactly.
So this number would be the peak, or the combination,
what we look at into comparing the MIPS
and the non MIPS helmets.
And you can see that for the MIPS helmets
you could have a lower value.
- Okay, a minute ago you mentioned
that when you've done many, many tests,
like you have here,
you start to notice that a non MIPS helmet sounds different.
But also that you actually have to catch the helmet
in a different way.
That it bounces much higher up in the air.
It's no longer a low catch
because the energy is being absorbed.
The energy is still within the helmet
and it's still being fired off somewhere else.
- Yeah, exactly.
I mean, since we're basically redirecting energy,
the slip plane that MIPS, you get the energy,
instead of you get a high bounce, you get--
- Yeah, so not only would you feel it in your head
if you had the accident.
You'd also visibly see it, that it's been less severe.
The energy has been absorbed by your system.
- Yeah, exactly.
(mellow electronic music)
- Do you think there's enough information
and education out there
about the effects of concussion and the brain injuries
that rotational motion can cause?
- The most important is that people wear a helmet.
So, I mean, that is definitely the most important.
That you have a helmet when you're riding a bike.
Even if your riding just to work, or a short distance.
We can see that most accidents, or a lot of accidents,
occur yes for these short,
when you're just going to the store buying whatever.
To put on the helmet.
I'm wearing a helmet everyday.
It's like when you put a safety belt in the car.
It's a natural thing for me.
In other countries in Europe,
helmet use are not that frequent,
as maybe we have in Sweden.
But when you understand how sensitive the human head
and the brain is,
then of course you want to have a helmet
and you want to have a safe helmet as possible.
As helmet are tested today for pure vertical impact,
that is not how you fall.
You fall at an angle.
And it can get the rotation.
And we know that the brain is much more sensitive
for the rotational motion.
So, therefore hopefully,
helmets will improve in the coming 10 years.
And hopefully most helmet will have
a rotational protection system in there.
(upbeat electronic music)
- When it comes to choosing a helmet for myself
I base it on a few things.
I base it on the aesthetics of the helmet.
How does it look when I'm wearing it?
How comfortable is it?
Is it light weight?
Is it well ventilated?
I've certainly never really stopped to consider
is it actually protecting my head?
Because I always just assumed
that a top of the range helmet was doing just that.
And I've definitely for one second never thought
about rotational motion.
Because it wasn't something I'd ever heard of until today.
But going forwards, I now understand,
that it's really this that's causing the damage
to our brains when we do have one of these accidents.
(intense electronic music)
this snow globe simulates rotational motion
transmitted to the brain.
And most helmets are tested with a vertical drop test,
like this.
If you look inside the snow globe,
you'll see the snow hasn't moved.
Imagine that's now your brain matter
and us tart to factor in angular velocity,
such as we experience when out on our bikes.
And it's then that you start to see the impact
of such a crash or an accident.
And that's why the MIPS system has been designed.
Is to limit the effects that this is having
and to prevent brain injuries.
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