Abstract
Recent findings suggest that selective brain cooling is a promising therapy for patients with traumatic brain injuries (TBI). It reduces or eliminates the deadly effects of TBI's secondary injury processes during the time required for the first responders to evacuate patients from the accident site to the hospital or trauma centers. Also, it is important to induce hypothermia as quickly as possible as protection appears to be greater when cooling is initiated early. The objectives of this work are to construct a realistic full three dimensional model of a human head from MRI scan images, and to simulate the effects of scalp and neck cooling on the brain temperature distribution. Results show that scalp cooling is only effective at the top thin layer of the brain few millimetres below the cortical surface, and the incoming blood temperature plays a major role in brain cooling.