Development of a 3-D FEM Program for Simulating Retinal Detachment Operation on an Eyeball

Abstract

The effectiveness of the scleral buckling operation, which is one of those most frequently applied to clinical treatment of the rhegmatogenous retinal detachment in the eyeball, strongly depends on the surgeon's experience so that it is usually difficult to achieve a fully satisfactory effect. Aiming at computer-aided operation planning employing the FEM simulation technique, a 2-D FEM program for a coupling analysis of the hyperelastic solid and static liquid has been developed to qualitatively simulate the procedure of this kind of operation. In this paper, a 3-D FEM program that provides all the functions required for simulating the complicated 3-D procedure of the buckling operation, such as solid-liquid coupling analysis, contact treatment between deformed soft tissues and analyses of buckling and suturing process, is developed. An improved algorithm of the coupling analysis which can avoid the time and memory consuming problem existing in that used in the 2-D one as well as an effective approach in treating the contact between deformed soft tissues are employed in this program. After validating its analysis accuracy through a testing analysis, a simulation of the encircling buckling operation procedure is presented, and the results demonstrate the ability of the program to predict the most suitable factors for an effective clinical operation.