Intra-abdominal injury from blunt trauma is one of the leading causes of preventable childhood death in the US. Computed tomography is the reference standard for intra-abdominal injury, but exposes children to harmful radiation, increasing a child’s lifetime risk of cancer. Clinicians must weigh the risk of an immediate missed life-threatening intraabdominal versus the cumulative lifetime risk of radiation exposure from computed tomography. Over the last 25 years, there has been dramatic increases in computed tomography rates in injured children without proportional improvement in outcomes. Therefore, we must develop risk stratification methods to reduce the number of unnecessary computed tomography scans in injured children.
Our current research projects
- Development and Validation of Novel Clinical Decision Rules
- Computer Vision
- Point of Care Diagnostic Testing
- Device Design and Testing