Head trauma is one of the most common inflicted injury during childhood. Shaken baby syndrome (SBS) is among the most common form of infantile inflicted head injury. This inflicted injury might lead to damage to the nervous system, cause blindness, breathing problems and in some cases death. The primary purpose of our study was to test a range of hypotheses relating to SBS related injuries. Our primary goal was to find the tissue damage patterns existing due to shaken baby syndrome and whether we could distinguish this pattern from a damage pattern due to an impact injury.

Computer simulations based on the finite element method was used to simulate the effect of repeated shakings, since shaken baby syndrome is the result of a succession of thrusts back and forth over time scales ranging up to few seconds. The data for reconstructing the head-brain model was obtained from 2D CT /MRI scans. These 2D images were reconstructed into a 3D geometrical model to suit finite element modeling. The image processing was done using Mimics a commercially available image processing tool. 3D finite element model was reconstructed from the 3D geometrical model. An explicit non linear finite element solver LS-Dyna was used for this study. We have compared our results to a well documented case of SBS. Correlations of injury to observed areas of maximum strain are quite good and lend credibility to our model.