News
POISED Project
The older adult is often faced with a myriad of health related issues with the likelihood of suffering a fall being one major concern. The outcomes of a fall are many, extending from short-term health problems to long-term consequences. Up to 30% of people who fall suffer a traumatic injury (e.g., hip fractures, brain injury). In addition, victims of falls often develop a fear of falling, which frequently results in sedentary lifestyles that begin a vicious spiral toward reduced mobility, physical fitness, as well as the risk of early death.
The POISED Project will implement a novel and comprehensive model for educating and providing intervention programs for the older adult population in Prince William County, using qualified and highly trained personnel. All older individuals who meet the inclusion criteria are automatically qualified for the services provided.
SMART Lab Concussion Research Aids Local Youth Sports
This fall the Jets football team will wear helmets with sensors that monitor the force of impacts sustained throughout games and practices while also submitting saliva samples for potential bio-marker research relating to concussions. But these Jets are not professioinal NFL athletes. They play in the Central Loudoun Youth Football League. Today concussions are discussed far more frequently in the sports world due largely to recent rule changes in teh NFL designed to increase player safety.
A Novel Application of Musculoskeletal Ultrasound Imaging
Ultrasound is an attractive modality for imaging muscle and tendon motion during dynamic tasks and can provide a complementary methodological approach for biomechanical studies in a clinical or laboratory setting. Towards this goal, methods for quantification of muscle kinematics from ultrasound imagery are being developed based on image processing. The temporal resolution of these methods is typically not sufficient for highly dynamic tasks, such as drop-landing. We propose a new approach that utilizes a Doppler method for quantifying muscle kinematics. Read more...
Osteoarthritis and the (not so) painful step toward understanding the problem
A Press Release by Journal of Visualized Experiment about the research led by Dr. Cortes, and presented by SMART Lab collaborator Dr. Sikdar.
Shedding Light on Concussion Trends in Youth Sports
In his most recent study working with scholastic athletes, Shane Caswell found that concussions are actually increasing across several girls' and boys' sports.
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