Interactive simulation of flexible needle insertions based on constraint models.

This paper presents a new modeling method for the insertion of needles and more generally thin and flexible medical devices into soft tissues. Several medical procedures rely on the insertion of slender medical devices such as biopsy, brachytherapy, deep-brain stimulation. In this paper, the interactions between soft tissues and flexible instruments are reproduced using a set of dedicated complementarity constraints. Each constraint is positionned and applied to the deformable models without requiring any remeshing. Our method allows for the 3D simulation of different physical phenomena such as puncture, cutting, static and dynamic friction at interactive frame rate. To obtain realistic simulation, the model can be parametrized using experimental data. Our method is validated through a series of typical simulation examples and new more complex scenarios.