Xiuzhong Wang

Graduation Semester and Year

2005

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering

Department

Electrical Engineering

First Advisor

Venkat Devarajan

Abstract

Surgical simulation is in great need for surgical training, analysis, planing and rehearsal. The core of this simulation is the deformable models for the organs. The deformable model must provides both realistic visual effects (graphics) and high fidelity force feedback (haptics) in real time, without distractive visual artifacts and misleading tactile clues. In view of the requirement of physical accuracy, physically based deformable models are favorable for surgical simulation. Physically based deformable modeling has been a serious research topic for about twenty years in the computer graphics community. For computer animation, a great deal of work has been done so that the model can barely provide realistic (physically plausible) visual effects in real-time. Surgical simulation has a much higher requirement for the deformable model. First, to meet the haptics update rate of 1000 Hz rather than the graphics update rate of 30 Hz, the cycle time for evolving the deformable model decreases significantly. Second, the physical accuracy needed for high fidelity force feedback is much more challenging to achieve than realistic visual effects, and results in much heavier computation. Although there have been a lot of successful stories about the application of physically based deformable models for computer animation, those models are far from mature for the applications supporting haptics, such as surgical simulation and emerging computer games supporting force feedback. The existing models are neither fast enough for real-time applications, nor can they provide both realistic deformation for graphics display and force feedback for haptics rendering. In view of this situation, it is essential to improve current deformable models or present better ones in terms of speed and physical accuracy when we aim to build a high fidelity surgical simulator for effective surgical training. The scope of this dissertation is threefold. First, a new deformable model is proposed based on the structure and elements of the organs, which has potential to be more physically accurate though it can hardly meet the real time requirement for the current computer resources. Second, since the mass-spring-damper (MSD) model is currently the only deformable model able to meet the real time requirement, the physical accuracy of the 1D, 2D and 3D MSD models for both structured meshes and unstructured meshes is investigated by continuum mechanics and the parameter optimization schemes are proposed and validated. Finally, the inguinal hernia surgery simulator is introduced and further research to apply the parameter optimization scheme is suggested.

Disciplines

Electrical and Computer Engineering | Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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