A Hybrid Modeling Scheme for Virtual Reality Based Medical Simulation

Abstract

This paper describes a hybrid-modeling scheme of soft tissue deformation for a virtual reality based medical simulator. By using two different physically based models, it satisfies two competitive requirements of real time performance and accuracy. A local point collocation-based method of finite spheres is coupled with a global boundary element technique to capture local features of the interaction (e.g., nonlinearities of the soft tissue) without sacrificing global accuracy. The technique is demonstrated using realistic examples.