Development of a nonlinear biomechanical soft tissue model for a virtual surgery trainer

가상수술기를 위한 비선형 생체 모델의 개발

Soft tissue characterization and modeling based on living tissues has been investigated in order to provide a more realistic behavior in a virtual reality based surgical simulation. In this paper, we characterize the nonlinear viscoelastic properties of intra-abdominal organs using the data from in vivo animal experiments and inverse FE parameter estimation algorithm. In the assumptions of quasi-linear-viscoelastic theory, we estimated the nonlinear material parameters to provide a physically based simulation of tissue deformations. To calibrate the parameters to the experimental results, we developed a three dimensional FE model to simulate the forces at the indenter and an optimization program that updates new parameters and runs the simulation iteratively. The comparison between simulation and experimental behavior of pig intra abdominal soft tissue are presented to provide a validness of the tissue model using our approach.