Abstract
We study the deformation and haptic feedback of soft tissue in virtual surgery based on a liver model by using a force feedback device named PHANTOM OMNI developed by SensAble Company in USA. Although a significant amount of research efforts have been dedicated to simulating the behaviors of soft tissue and implementing force feedback, it is still a challenging problem. This paper introduces a kind of meshfree method for deformation simulation of soft tissue and force computation based on viscoelastic mechanical model and smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). Firstly, viscoelastic model can present the mechanical characteristics of soft tissue which greatly promotes the realism. Secondly, SPH has features of meshless technique and self-adaption, which supply higher precision than methods based on meshes for force feedback computation. Finally, a SPH method based on dynamic interaction area is proposed to improve the real time performance of simulation. The results reveal that SPH methodology is suitable for simulating soft tissue deformation and force feedback calculation, and SPH based on dynamic local interaction area has a higher computational efficiency significantly compared with usual SPH. Our algorithm has a bright prospect in the area of virtual surgery.
Highlights
Virtual surgery simulation is an important application of virtual reality aiming at establishing vivid virtual surgery environment with all kinds of medical image data so that doctors and trainees can make use of it to do surgical trainings.Traditionally, the animal model and corpses are considered the most common training model
The purpose of employing the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) based on dynamic local interaction area to compute the deformation process is improving the computational efficiency by reducing the number of particles participating in the computation, and its basic idea is to divide the model into deformation area and nondeformation area and assume that the deformation is only affected by nodes in the deformation area, and the nodes in nondeformation area will remain still
Interaction area is the region greatly influenced by the surgical instruments, in which the SPH method is adopted to do accurate calculation of particles; transmission area is the effective propagation range of force, in which the physical quantities of all particles are obtained by decaying physical quantities of the force points
Summary
Virtual surgery simulation is an important application of virtual reality aiming at establishing vivid virtual surgery environment with all kinds of medical image data so that doctors and trainees can make use of it to do surgical trainings. The animal model and corpses are considered the most common training model. The animal model has fundamental differences in anatomy and tissue consistency compared to human tissue, and the corpses are expensive and cannot be reused. It is difficult to reach a proficient skill level for surgeons. This calls for a more innovative training system for surgical residents. Virtual surgery simulation system can meet it. In such a system, the surgeons would be able to interact with the virtual three-dimensional models of organs using their sense of vision and touch
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