Implementation and clinical application of a deformation method for fast simulation of biological tissue formed by fibers and fluid. Issue 1 (December 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Sardinha, Ana; Oyama, Ceres; Maroja, Armando; Costa, Ivan
• Is Part Of: Source code for biology and medicine. Volume 11:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 1
• Page End: 14
• Publication Date: 2016-12
• Subjects: Image-guided surgery -- Computer-assisted intervention -- Soft tissue biomechanics -- Real-time interactive simulation -- Virtual reality; Biology -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Medicine -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Bioinformatics -- Periodicals; 570.285
• DOI: 10.1186/s13029-016-0054-x
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-0473

Abstract

Abstract Background The aim of this paper is to provide a general discussion, algorithm, and actual working programs of the deformation method for fast simulation of biological tissue formed by fibers and fluid. In order to demonstrate the benefit of the clinical applications software, we successfully used our computational program to deform a 3D breast image acquired from patients, using a 3D scanner, in a real hospital environment. Results The method implements a quasi-static solution for elastic global deformations of objects. Each pair of vertices of the surface is connected and defines an elastic fiber. The set of all the elastic fibers defines a mesh of smaller size than the volumetric meshes, allowing for simulation of complex objects with less computational effort. The behavior similar to the stress tensor is obtained by the volume conservation equation that mixes the 3D coordinates. Step by step, we show the computational implementation of this approach. Conclusions As an example, a 2D rectangle formed by only 4 vertices is solved and, for this simple geometry, all intermediate results are shown. On the other hand, actual implementations of these ideas in the form of working computer routines are provided for general 3D objects, including a clinical application.