Haptic Interaction with Segmented Medical Image Embedded in Finite Element Mesh

Abstract

The generation of patient-specific models is one of the difficult problems in the clinical application of surgery simulators. In particular, when estimation of soft tissue deformation is required, a finite element (FE) mesh needs to be generated from the patient's medical images. One of the effective methods of FE mesh generation is the volume embedding approach. In this approach, the medical volume data are embedded in a simple volumetric mesh such as orthogonal grid. However, the volume embedding method generates an incorrect boundary surface in the FE mesh. This makes it difficult to solve the contact problem between tools and embedded volumes. In this paper, an efficient contact handling method for embedded volumes using the signed distance field is described. In addition, its application to haptic rendering is introduced.