Section: Software and Platforms

SOFA

SOFA http://www.sofa-framework.org is an open-source software framework targeted at interactive computational (medical) simulation. The idea of SOFA was initiated by members of the SHACRA team, and strongly supported by Inria through a development program that we lead. SOFA facilitates collaborations between specialists from various domains, by decomposing complex simulators into components designed independently. Each component encapsulates one of the key aspects of a simulation, such as the degrees of freedom, the forces and constraints, the differential equations, the linear solvers, the collision detection algorithms or the interaction devices. The simulated objects can be represented using several models, each of them optimized for a different task such as the computation of internal forces, collision detection, haptics or visual display. These models are synchronized during the simulation using a mapping mechanism. CPU and GPU implementations can be transparently combined to exploit the computational power of modern hardware architectures. Thanks to this flexible yet efficient architecture, SOFA can be used as a test-bed to compare models and algorithms, or as a basis for the development of complex, high-performance simulators. As proof of its success, SOFA has been downloaded nearly 150,000 times, and is used today by many research groups around the world, as well as a number of companies. The mailing list used to exchange with the community includes several hundreds of researchers, from about 50 different institutions. SOFA is at the heart of a number of research projects, including cardiac electro-physiology modeling, interventional radiology planning and guidance, planning for cryosurgery and deep brain stimulation, robotics, percutaneous procedures, laparoscopic surgery, non-rigid registration, etc. SOFA is the only software developed by our team, but practically speaking it is a collection of plugins (each one aimed at a specific application) organized around a common core that provides a large number of functionalities. As mentioned previously, SOFA is currently used by a number of companies (Siemens Corporate Research, Digital Trainers, Epona Medical, Moog, SenseGraphics, etc.) and also provides the key technology on which our newly created start-up (InSimo) is relying. We strongly believe that today SOFA has become a reference for academic research, and is increasingly gaining recognition for product prototyping and development. The best illustration of this worldwide positioning is the role of SOFA in the challenge set by the HelpMeSee foundation to win the contract for the development of a very ambitious and high-risk project on cataract surgery simulation.

We also gave a 4 hours workshop on SOFA at MMVR/NextMed conference in february 2013 in San Diego. This workshop was done in collaboration with the swedish company SenseGraphics. The topic was to demonstrate the setup of a dental surgery simulation in Sofa, and use SenseGraphics visual tools for the rendering. The attendees feedback was beyond our expectations, with an unexpected interest in new SOFA features like the SofaPython plugin. Still about SOFA, like last year we gave in october a 3 days training session in Montpellier for about twenty SOFA beginners (mostly engineers). These are new engineers of the three teams involved in SOFA development, and employees of companies using SOFA in their business. Last, a "SOFA Day" in november in prelude of the Vriphys conference gave us a unique opportunity to meet SOFA users from various research institutes or companies, and exchange about the future improvements and development of the engine. We use these occasions to share and discuss with SOFA users, to refine the roadmap and stay tuned with our audience.