Toward high-speed 3D nonlinear soft tissue deformation simulations using Abaqus software

Area of Science:

• Computational mechanics
• Biomedical engineering
• Surgical simulation

Background:

• Accurate simulation of soft tissue deformation is crucial for surgical planning and robotic surgery.
• Nonlinear constitutive models are necessary to capture the complex behavior of biological tissues.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a fast and accurate 3D finite element simulation of porcine liver deformation under surgical tool pressure.
• To investigate the impact of analysis schemes, element types, and mesh density on simulation accuracy and computation time.

Main Methods:

• Utilized commercial finite element software (Abaqus) for simulation.
• Employed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for liver geometry acquisition.
• Applied a nonlinear constitutive law to model large tissue deformations.
• Compared implicit and explicit analysis schemes, element types, and mesh densities.

Main Results:

• Abaqus explicit and implicit solvers accurately simulated nonlinear soft tissue deformations.
• First-order tetrahedral elements, with optimized size, achieved accurate results in a short computation time.
• The study identified optimal parameters for efficient and precise soft tissue simulation.

Conclusions:

• Finite element analysis in Abaqus can achieve accurate and relatively fast nonlinear soft tissue simulations.
• Optimized simulation parameters provide guidance for developing realistic surgical tools.
• These simulations can enhance force feedback in robotic surgery, surgical planning, and resident training.