Interactive residual stress modeling for soft tissue simulation

Residual stress is the stress which remains in a deformable body in the absence of external forces. Due to the release of residual stress after cutting, soft tissues will shrink and the wound will open. Thus, to realistically simulate soft tissue deformations due to cutting, a model for the residual stress in a patient body is needed. In this paper we present an interactive method to compute a physically meaningful patient-specific residual stress distribution. With our method, by using their experience doctors can sketch directional stress strokes and specify stress magnitudes at a few control points on the body surface. The residual stress is then immediately computed from these inputs and visualized by displaying the deformations of a set of control cuts on the body. In a visually guided session, the user can further modify the initial strokes and magnitudes until a sat isfactory result is obtained. We demonstrate the potential of the proposed method for virtual cut simulation by showing the variations of wound openings depending on the residual stress distribution.