A MESHLESS DEFORMATION SIMULATION METHOD FOR VIRTUAL SURGERY

An accurate and computation-effective model of soft tissues is very important for surgery simulation. When soft tissues are interacted by a surgical instrument, their external deformation and internal stress and strain distribution are closely related. These stress and strain data can not only be used to describe the soft tissue deformation but also can be used to calculate interaction force rendered to the force feedback device, making the user to have a realistic sense of touch during the surgical procedure. It is difficult, however, to solve partial differential equations (PDE) in conventional soft tissue models, and stress and strain data cannot be easily extracted. This paper presents a meshless local radial point interpolation method for soft tissue modelling and demonstrates its feasibility by numerical tests.