Section: New Software and Platforms

SOFA

SOFA (More information about SOFA at http://www.sofa-framework.org ) is an open-source software framework targeted at real-time multi-physics simulation, with an emphasis on medical simulation. The idea of SOFA was initiated by members of the SHACRA team, strongly supported by Inria and still actively developed within the SHACRA team. Based on C++, the SOFA engine provides many algorithms, physiological models and anatomical data, made available within a plugin architecture. With its high level of modularity, SOFA appears to be an efficient tools to benchmark and develop new medical technologies using existing algorithms.

The SOFA framework relies on a multi-model representation which allows to have several representations (e.g. mechanical, thermal and visual) of the same object. Those different representations are connected together through a mechanism called mapping. With this features, it is also possible to have models of very different nature interacting together, for instance rigid bodies, deformable objects, and fluids. CPU and GPU implementations can be transparently combined to exploit the computational power of modern hardware architectures.

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. 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 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.