A Study on Dual-Mode Hybrid Dynamics Finite Element Algorithm for Human Soft Tissue Deformation Simulation

As Virtual Reality technology is applied in medical domains deeply, surgical simulator is receiving widely attentions. As safe and efficient surgery training equip-ment, surgical simulator can provide surgeons with safe environment to practice sur-gical skills. The aim of surgical simulator is to calculate the responses of the soft tissue in surgery scenes caused by surgical tools. The basic task is to simulate deformation of soft tissue and cutting caused by scalpel. The non-linearity of the soft tissue and failure of pre-computed quantity caused by topology modification introduce great challenges for simulation of deformation and cutting within real-time. Dual-Mode Hybrid Dy-namic Finite Element Algorithm (DHD-FEA), the Finite Element Method (FEM) is adopted to simulate deformation of soft tissue. Nonlinear FEM model is applied to operational area for accuracy and linear FEM is applied to non-operational area for efficiency. A dynamic time integration scheme is applied to solve finite element equa-tions. Experiments show a good balance between accuracy and efficiency of defor-mation simulation.