An electromechanical based deformable model for soft tissue simulation

SummaryObjectiveSoft tissue deformation is of great importance to surgery simulation. Although a significant amount of research efforts have been dedicated to simulating the behaviours of soft tissues, modelling of soft tissue deformation is still a challenging problem. This paper presents a new deformable model for simulation of soft tissue deformation from the electromechanical viewpoint of soft tissues.Methods and materialSoft tissue deformation is formulated as a reaction–diffusion process coupled with a mechanical load. The mechanical load applied to a soft tissue to cause a deformation is incorporated into the reaction–diffusion system, and consequently distributed among mass points of the soft tissue. Reaction–diffusion of mechanical load and non-rigid mechanics of motion are combined to govern the simulation dynamics of soft tissue deformation.ResultsAn improved reaction–diffusion model is developed to describe the distribution of the mechanical load in soft tissues. A three-layer artificial cellular neural network is constructed to solve the reaction–diffusion model for real-time simulation of soft tissue deformation. A gradient based method is established to derive internal forces from the distribution of the mechanical load. Integration with a haptic device has also been achieved to simulate soft tissue deformation with haptic feedback.ConclusionsThe proposed methodology does not only predict the typical behaviours of living tissues, but it also accepts both local and large-range deformations. It also accommodates isotropic, anisotropic and inhomogeneous deformations by simple modification of diffusion coefficients.