PhD review 2005

Title

Model Generation and Interaction in Surgical Simulation

Time and location

12.00 21st July 2005
Level 5, GSBME, Samuels Building, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

Abstract

Surgical simulation for training and planning of clinical procedures is a current and active area of research in the computer science and biomedical communities. Patient-specific anatomical information can be extracted from 3D scans (e.g. Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Computed Tomography) using segmentation algorithms. However, generating models from these segmentations that are suitable for use in simulators is a challenging problem because of the need to accurately represent anatomical variability, and the computational restriction on the complexity of the models that can be used.

In this work, I have investigated a series of schemes for automatic generation of tetrahedral meshes from segmented voxel data, and have created a set of tools and algorithms for modifying and interacting with these models. Earlier work, focused on the generation of unstructured tetrahedral meshes, will be reviewed. I will also present an overview of the development of modeling and interaction tools and algorithms for our own surgical simulation environment, along with our custom software written for it, the TTK ToolKit.

Current work, including a novel algorithm for automatic generation of multi-level tetrahedral meshes from anatomical data, will be presented; the technique can generate meshes in the order of millions of elements in less than an hour on current PC hardware. Lastly, I will present a review of future directions and a plan for the remainder of my PhD thesis.

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