Title: Interactive soft tissue modelling for virtual reality surgery simulation and planning

Authors: Shaimaa Ahmed El-said; Hossam Mohamed Abol Atta; Aboul Ella Hassanien

Addresses: Electronics and Communications Department, Faculty of Engineering, Zagazig University, P.O. Box 44519, Zagazig, Egypt ' Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11539, Egypt ' Information Technology Department, Faculty of Computers and Information, Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract: While most existing virtual reality-based surgical simulators in the literature use linear deformation models, soft-tissues exhibit geometric and material nonlinearities that should be taken into account for realistic modelling of the deformations. In this paper, an interactive soft tissue model (ISTM) which enables flexible, accurate and robust simulation of surgical interventions on virtual patients is proposed. In ISTM, simulating the tool-tissue interactions using nonlinear dynamic analysis is formulated within a total Lagrangian framework, and the energy function is modified by adding a term in order to achieve material incompressibility. The simulation results show that ISTM increases the stability and eliminates integration errors in the dynamic solution, decreases calculation costs by a factor of 5-7, and leads to very stable and sufficiently accurate results. From the simulation results it can be concluded that the proposed model can successfully create acceptable soft tissue models and generate realistically visual effects of surgical simulation.

Keywords: soft tissue modelling; nonlinear FEM; finite element method; FEM; elastic tissue deformation; surgery simulation; virtual reality; surgery planning; surgical interventions; virtual patients; tool-tissue interactions; nonlinear dynamic analysis.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAET.2017.080768

International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology, 2017 Vol.9 No.1, pp.38 - 61

Received: 22 Mar 2014
Accepted: 24 Jun 2014

Published online: 07 Dec 2016 *

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