Inside the Helmet

There is nothing like holding a new born baby. It is hard not to admire their tiny fingers and toes, soft skin and the peach fuzz on top of their fragile head. What makes infant heads so fragile are the “soft spots” know as fontanels—areas where the only barrier between the brain and the outside world is a thin layer of skin. Due to the skull’s malleability, childbirth and infancy can cause deformation which must be corrected before the head is finished growing at 18 months old. The Infant Cranial Remodeling Creative Inquiry project, led by Dr. John DesJardins and graduate student Kyle Walker from the Department of Bioengineering, strives to increase the effectiveness of helmet therapy by determining the minimum amount of pressure required to reshape an infant skull.

It is crucial to identify cranial abnormalities during the first few months of a baby’s life. As bones in the skull grow, they fuse, making it much harder to correct deformities. Significant deformities can prevent the brain from developing properly and lead to permanent damage. “I personally had a cranial remodeling process, and had a helmet as a kid. I didn’t see any research in this field when I started in 2019,” Katie Bender, a senior bioengineering major, said. “The way in which cranial remodeling has changed in the last 20 to 30 years has been very minimal, and part of that is because there’s not a lot of data out there showing exactly what’s going on inside the helmet,” Sarah Johnson, a biomedical engineering graduate student and collaborator, said.

The Creative Inquiry project works with physicians at Prisma Health in Greenville, South Carolina to evaluate the effectiveness of the current cranial remodeling process. The current method designs a helmet in accordance with a desired head shape. Visual marks, such as red spots on infant’s head, indicate if the helmet is applying pressure on the correct places. The Creative Inquiry team is integrating quantitative data with the visual cues in hopes to calculate the lowest amount of pressure needed while using the correctional helmets.

Correctional helmets are made with a hard, plastic outer shell and a soft, plaster-based inner shell. This design permits constant pressure to areas of the skull that do not need to expand while other areas are allowed to grow. A model of each patient’s head and their initial helmet are sent to Clemson University’s Laboratory of Orthopaedic Design and Engineering, where the Creative Inquiry students note points with pressure using sensors. Students then accompany the physician to follow-up appointments and use the sensor data to alter the helmet after each appointment throughout the entire treatment. The team hopes their continuous and meticulous work will help physicians improve infant cranial remodeling in medical facilities around the world.