Particle-based simulation of blood flow and vessel wall interactions in virtual surgery

Abstract

We propose a particle-based solution to simulate the interactions between blood flow and vessel wall for virtual surgery. By coupling two particle-based techniques, the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and mass-spring model (MSM), we can simulate the blood flow and deformation of vessel seamlessly. At the vessel wall, particles are considered as both boundary particles for SPH solver and mass points for the MSM solver. We implement an improved repulsive boundary condition to simulate the interactions. The computation of blood flow dynamics and vessel wall deformations are performed in an alternating fashion in every time step. To ensure realism, parameters of both SPH and MSM are carefully configured. Experimental results demonstrate the potential of the proposed method in providing real-time and realistic interactions for virtual vascular surgery systems. © 2010 ACM.