A deformable body model for surgical simulation

We propose a deformable body model in order to simulate the dynamic behaviour of human organs in surgical simulators. It is based on a spring surface mesh, fitted with a virtual rigid component which does not interact with the environment and provides the structure with a rigid behaviour. This specific structure is intended to be physically based and interactive but also to support dynamic alteration such as incisions, under several constraints: mechanical realism, robustness and real time. Moreover, interactions are taken into account by a 4D collision detection algorithm between polygonal objects, and reponse is computed analytically. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.