Duration : 12 months
Contact :François Faure
Competences : completed Ph.D., experience in physically-based
animation and real-time techniques
The design
of real-time models for pedagogical surgical simulators is one of the most
challenging applications of Computer Animation: it combines the need for
efficient models ranging from rigid to visco-elastic
bodies and to liquids with the necessity to embed them in a unified, real-time
simulation framework enabling their interaction. The some of the required
models are volumetric; others are membranes and strands-like objects, which may
self-collide as well. Moreover, each of these models has to be able to change
over time due to user interaction (such as separating, cutting, burning,
stitching tissues), which modifies both their appearance and their mechanical
behaviour. Lastly, the final aim to design a surgical simulator yields the need
for two antagonist features: real-time and realism (which has to be understood in
shape and deformations but also in visual appearance and in the force feedback user-interaction
outputs).
This area
of research has been a subject of intense interest during the past decade (the previous
work from
our group is listed below), but most contributions only concentrated in
modelling one of the desired behaviour and nobody has provided, yet, a
real-time environment enabling interaction with a number of organs and tissues.
The aim of
this project is to develop real-time physically-based models for surgery
simulation, keeping in mind that these models of different nature should
interact in real-time and should allow user interaction, namely separating,
cutting, suturing and removing biological tissues. In particular, the search for real-time
performances may require the use of LODs and multiresolution techniques, of graphics hardware
acceleration, the combination of different collision detection and response
strategies and the design of specific algorithms for cutting and modifying the
different tissues.
The models
will be used in the context is minimally invasive surgery and more precisely for
an application to radical prostatectomy developed in the framework of the ODYSSEUS European project. In addition
to work with researchers at EVASION (Francois Faure and
Marie-Paule Cani), a strong
collaboration will be held with the following partners:
The later provides
us with video sequences of real surgery and reconstructed geometric models of
individual organs. The engineers at EPIDAURE and ALCOVE will work on the
integration of the research developed at EVASION within a common simulation
platform for all the INRIA partners.
Validation through
tests performed by surgeons will be held at IRCAD, enabling the demonstration
of the practical usability of the solutions we develop.