Development and validation of real-time simulation of X-ray imaging with respiratory motion

•Growing need for the virtual physiological human (VPH): we focus on respiration/X-ray.•Trade-off between realism and speed: respiration computed on CPU; X-ray on GPU.•We validate that our framework provides real-time performance and accurate results.•Easy to re-use our models and demos available to give system performance evidence.•X-ray simulation code and validation under open-source license on SourceForge.net.

We present a framework that combines evolutionary optimisation, soft tissue modelling and ray tracing on GPU to simultaneously compute the respiratory motion and X-ray imaging in real-time. Our aim is to provide validated building blocks with high fidelity to closely match both the human physiology and the physics of X-rays. A CPU-based set of algorithms is presented to model organ behaviours during respiration. Soft tissue deformation is computed with an extension of the Chain Mail method. Rigid elements move according to kinematic laws. A GPU-based surface rendering method is proposed to compute the X-ray image using the Beer–Lambert law. It is provided as an open-source library. A quantitative validation study is provided to objectively assess the accuracy of both components: (i) the respiration against anatomical data, and (ii) the X-ray against the Beer–Lambert law and the results of Monte Carlo simulations. Our implementation can be used in various applications, such as interactive medical virtual environment to train percutaneous transhepatic cholangiography in interventional radiology, 2D/3D registration, computation of digitally reconstructed radiograph, simulation of 4D sinograms to test tomography reconstruction tools.