Neurotrauma Research Group

ASIST-TBI is a vision-transformer artificial intelligence model developed by our group. It screens the head CT scans of patients arriving in the Emergency Department with a head injury and flags those likely to need urgent neurosurgery, with accuracy comparable to a neurosurgeon’s own reading.

The impact: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability. Only about one in five TBI patients ultimately require surgery although every case is triaged the same way. By identifying high-risk patients up front, ASIST-TBI lets emergency physicians consult a neurosurgeon directly instead of waiting on sequential scan reviews. The tool is now being extended to additional hospital sites to reach more patients.