Effect of time complexities and variation of mass spring model parameters on surgical simulation

Physically based models assimilate organ-specific material properties, thus they are suitable in developing a surgical simulation. This study uses mass spring model (MSM) to represent the human liver because MSM is a discrete model that is potentially more realistic than the finite element model (FEM). For a high-end computer aided medical technology such as the surgical simulator, the most important issues are to fulfil the basic requirement of a surgical simulator. Novice and experienced surgeons use surgical simulator for surgery training and planning. Therefore, surgical simulation must provide a realistic and fast responding virtual environment. This study focuses on fulfilling the time complexity and realistic of the surgical simulator. In order to have a fast responding simulation, the choice of numerical integration method is crucial. This study shows that MATLAB ode45 is the fastest method compared to 2nd ordered Euler, MATLAB ode113, MATLAB ode23s and MATLAB ode23t. However, the major issue is human liver consists of soft tissues. In modelling a soft tissue model, we need to understand the mechanical response of soft tissues to surgical manipulation. Any interaction between haptic device and the liver model may causes large deformation and topology change in the soft tissue model. Thus, this study investigates and presents the effect of varying mass, damping, stiffness coefficient on the nonlinear liver mass spring model. MATLAB performs and shows simulation results for each of the experiment. Additionally, the observed optimal dataset of liver behaviour is applied in SOFA (Simulation Open Framework Architecture) to visualize the major effect.