There are over 1.9 million eye injuries per year in the United States with over 30,000 patients left blind in at least one eye as a result of trauma. Some of the most severe eye injuries can occur in automobile accidents and from sports related impacts. Eye injuries in the military environment are even more prevalent and are generally more severe than eye injuries to civilians. The rate of eye injuries has dramatically increased in warfare in recent years, rising from 2% of all casualties during World War I and World War II to over 13% of all combat injuries in Operation Desert Storm. While many of the conflict-related eye injuries are caused by shrapnel and other debris, nearly 25% of the injuries are also caused by blunt trauma from motor vehicle and helicopter crashes, falling, and direct hits from blunt objects.

In order to develop safety countermeasures effective at preventing these eye injuries, as well as evaluate the eye injury potential of different impacts, it is desirable to have the capability for distinguishing between injurious and non-injurious eye impacts. Current anthropometric test device (ATD) headforms lack instrumentation and facial features to allow detailed assessment of eye or discrete facial injuries. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to present the development and validation of the Facial and Ocular CountermeasUre Safety (FOCUS) headform’s synthetic eye and orbit and corresponding eye injury risk criteria.