Intra-operative Update of Boundary Conditions for Patient-Specific Surgical Simulation

Patient-specific Biomechanical Models (PBMs) can enhance computer assisted surgical procedures with critical information. Although pre-operative data allow to parametrize such PBMs based on each patient’s properties, they are not able to fully characterize them. In particular, simulation boundary conditions cannot be determined from preoperative modalities, but their correct definition is essential to improve the PBM predictive capability. In this work, we introduce a pipeline that provides an up-to-date estimate of boundary conditions, starting from the pre-operative model of patient anatomy and the displacement undergone by points visible from an intra-operative vision sensor. The presented pipeline is experimentally validated in realistic conditions on an ex vivo pararenal fat tissue manipulation. We demonstrate its capability to update a PBM reaching clinically acceptable performances, both in terms of accuracy and intra-operative time constraints.