Soft Tissue Simulation

ONE PROBLEM with previous computer simulation systems was the inability to simulate soft tissue including muscles. That is well on the way to being solved as the memory and storage available in computers has soared from megabytes to gigabytes, and processor speed from kilohertz through megahertz to gigahertz, thus enabling the support of tissue modeling programs based on images constructed from voxels, based on tissue contours extracted from serial 3-D CT images. The elasticity of the skin and muscle over nonelastic bone is simulated by a model based on a series of ‘springs’, which the computer calculates in real time, allowing tissue to be interactively incised (with the incision shown in 3-D), excised, deformed and then sutured, so the result can be checked. Further enhancements to the existing program will be the ability to separate muscle from overlying soft tissue, and improvements to the reality of the displayed model with advances in texture mapping techniques. Click HERE to see some examples of the basic concepts of this tissue deformation model which are then applied to simulate a cleft lip procedure.