Background
Accurate measurement of head motion during impacts is essential for advancing the understanding and prevention of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Instrumented mouthguards provide an unobtrusive way to capture head kinematics in real-world environments such as sports. However, to ensure reliability and credibility, these devices must undergo rigorous calibration and validation against gold-standard measurements.
Sports & Wellbeing Analytics (SWA), a UK-based company developing advanced instrumented mouthguards, sought HIAP’s expertise in biomechanical testing and calibration to strengthen the accuracy and performance of their products.
Our Approach
HIAP designed and implemented a calibration programme tailored to SWA’s instrumented mouthguards. The programme included:
1. Controlled laboratory impact testing using standardised headforms.
2. Benchmark comparisons against high-precision reference sensors.
3. Quantification of both linear and rotational head kinematics, ensuring sensitivity across the range of impact severities encountered in sport.
4. Iterative feedback to SWA’s engineering team to refine sensor calibration and signal processing.
Our approach combined research-informed testing protocols with practical considerations for sports environments, ensuring that calibration results translated effectively to real-world use.
Outcomes
Through our collaboration, SWA’s instrumented mouthguards achieved:
1. Independent validation of sensor performance, enhancing confidence for athletes, coaches, clinicians, and regulators.
2. A stronger evidence base to support product adoption in both professional and grassroots sport.
3. The project also provided SWA with clear, data-driven recommendations for future device optimisation, ensuring their technology remains at the forefront of brain injury monitoring.
Collaborations
This consultancy collaboration extended beyond calibration. It directly contributed to the development of a major research initiative: a Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellowship led by Dr Mazdak Ghajari, with SWA as the key industrial sponsor. The fellowship aims to create world-leading AI-based predictive models of traumatic brain injury, integrating high-quality mouthguard data with advanced computational modelling.
This project exemplifies how HIAP bridges consultancy, industry needs, and academic research to drive innovations that improve athlete safety and wellbeing.
Publication
Jones, C. M., Austin, K., Augustus, S. N., Nicholas, K. J., Yu, X., Baker, C., … & Ghajari, M. (2023). An instrumented mouthguard for real-time measurement of head kinematics under a large range of sport specific accelerations. Sensors, 23(16), 7068.
