Real Time Simulation of Tissue Cutting Based on GPU and CUDA for Surgical Training

A novel approach to the simulation of soft tissue cutting in a virtual reality endoscopic simulator is presented for applications in surgical training and education. This approach is based on an improved mass-spring model and the use of computational geometry. A virtual spring is introduced to compensate the weakness of the conventional mass-spring model, and a detection algorithm utilizing decomposition of affine coordinates is adopted to determine the springs that intersect with the cutting plane. In order to achieve real-time computation in the surgical simulation system, algorithms and data structures for the cutting model are implemented on GPU. The simulation performances of the GPU and CPU are compared, and experimental results are described.