Artery Soft-Tissue Modelling for Stent Implant Training System

Giovanni Aloisio, Lucio Tommaso De Paolis, Antonio Mongelli, Luciana Provenzano

Virtual reality technology can be utilised to provide new systematic training methods for surgical procedures. Our aim is to build a simulator that allows medical students to practice the coronary stent implant procedure and avoids exposing patients to risks. The designed simulation system consists of a virtual environment and a haptic interface, in order to provide both the visualization of the coronary arteries and the tactile and force feedback generated during the interactions of the surgical instruments in the virtual environment. Since the arteries are soft tissues, their shape may change during an operation; for this reason physical modelling of the organs is necessary to render their behaviour under the influence of surgeon’s instruments. The idea is to define a model that computes the displacement of the tissue versus time; from the displacement it is possible to calculate the response of the tissue to the surgical tool external stimuli. Information about tools displacements and tissue responses are also used to graphically model the artery wall and virtual surgical instrument deformations generated as a consequence of their coming into contact. In order to obtain a realistic simulation, the Finite Element Method has been used to model the soft tissues of the artery, using linear elasticity to reduce computational time and speed up interaction rates.

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