Contact modelling based on displacement field redistribution for surgical simulation

Abstract

We present a novel method of contact modelling for discrete deformable models. Our algorithm is used to simulate contact between rigid surgical tools of arbitrary shape and deformable virtual organs bounded by triangular mesh surfaces. It uses a divide and conquer strategy to redistribute an arbitrary field of displacements on organ surfaces into an equivalent field of displacements at the nodes. The computational complexity depends on the size of the touch field, but not on the size of the mesh representing the organ. Our algorithm results in accurate modelling and can be used in real-time applications requiring haptic feedback. © Springer-Verlag 2004.