A Novel Material Point Method Based Needle-Tissue Interaction Model

Needle-tissue interaction model plays an important role in virtual surgery training, pre-intervention planning and intra-intervention guidance. Traditionally, finite element methods (FEM) had been a primary and popular way for simulation modeling. However, FEM, as a mesh-based numerical calculations, is likely to encounter numerical difficulties due to mesh distortion as needle insertion process includes damage, fracture and penetration. In this work, a novel material point method (MPM) based needle-tissue interaction model is proposed, which combines the advantages of Lagrangian and Euler methods. A simplified contact algorithm and friction model are integrated to calculate contact forces as well as the resultant tissue deformations. Both preliminary contact forces and deformation results are compared with test experiments, which show that the maximum and mean displacement errors are 0.9768mm and 0.5134mm, respectively while the mean relative errors of force is 14%. This preliminary result demonstrates that MPM has great potential in needle-tissue interaction modeling.