Section: Software

Simulation Open Framework Architecture (SOFA)

Participants : Stéphanie Marchesseau, Erik Pernod, Tobias Heimann, Hervé Delingette [ Correspondant ] .

Web site: http://www.sofa-framework.org/ Gforge link: http://gforge.inria.fr/projects/sofa/

SOFA is an Open Source framework for the real-time simulation of deformable structures, particularly for medical simulation and planning. Three INRIA research teams are currently contributing to development of the SOFA platforms: the project team Alcove in Lille, Asclepios in Sophia-Antipolis and Evasion in Grenoble. The simulation group of the CIMIT (affiliated to MIT / Harvard / Massachussets General Hospital) has also strongly supported its development. This international open source platform is mostly intended for the research community to help the development of new algorithms, but it can also be used as a prototyping tool thanks to its modular architecture.

The involvement of the Asclepios team has been mostly focused on a new design that allows each SOFA component to cope with topological changes. Indeed, when simulating the surgical resection or suturing of an organ, it is necessary to update the data structure associated with the mesh of the organ but also the sparse matrices used in the computation of the mass and stiffness of the material. Propagating those topological changes to all components in a modular and generic way is a challenging task but provides a significant added value to all SOFA users.

An additional objective includes the definition of scalar fields (like pressure, electric potential fields) on surface or volumetric meshes in order to implement physiological models. Our mid-term goal is to develop in SOFA a real-time simulator of radiofrequency ablation involving haptic devices which is suitable to train cardialogist for this endovascular procedure.