Section: Overall Objectives

Challenges

The research of the MIMESIS team focuses on improving the realism and fidelity of interactive simulations of medical procedures 2 . From this increase in realism, new clinical applications emerged, in particular per-operative guidance, that currently rely on imaging techniques, but could greatly benefit from our expertise in real-time numerical simulation. To reach these objectives, we addressed several challenges that lie at the intersection of several scientific domains. They include real-time biophysical models (to define new models describing soft tissue deformation or physiological phenomena such as electrophysiology), novel numerical strategies (to enable real-time computation even with the increase in complexity of future models), dynamic topological representations (to support topological changes or adaptivity of the models in areas of interest), and image-driven simulation (to link simulation with real world data such as the one available in an intra-operative context). The SOFA (Simulation Open Framework Architecture) platform, in combination with the SOFA-OR project, is used to integrate our various contributions into a series of prototypes, facilitating validation and technology transfer.

The multidisciplinary nature of our research implies that our scientific objectives span across several domains. We have identified 3 main challenges which lie at the intersection of multi-physics modeling, numerical simulation and computer vision. These challenges are summarized below:

• Real-time patient-specific computational models

  • Biomechanical, physiological and electrical modeling

  • Multi-model simulations

  • Validation

• Adaptive meshing and advanced simulation techniques

  • Multi-resolution topologies for physics-based simulation

  • Patient-specific modeling for numerical simulation

  • Numerical strategies for real-time simulation

• Image-driven Simulation

  • Parameter Identification / data assimilation

  • Linking image analysis and physics-based modeling

Figure 2. Objectives of the MIMESIS team: from training to intra-operative guidance, our objective is to reach accurate patient-specific simulations