No abstract

Physically based models assimilate organ-specific material properties, thus they are suitable in developing a surgical simulation. This study uses mass spring model (MSM) to represent the human liver because MSM is a discrete model that is potentially more realistic than the finite element model (FEM). For a high-end computer aided medical technology such as the surgical simulator, the most important issues are to fulfil the basic requirement of a surgical simulator. Novice and experienced surgeons use surgical simulator for surgery training and planning. Therefore, surgical simulation must provide a realistic and fast responding virtual environment. This study focuses on fulfilling the time complexity and realistic of the surgical simulator. In order to have a fast responding simulation, the choice of numerical integration method is crucial. This study shows that MATLAB ode45 is the fastest method compared to 2nd ordered Euler, MATLAB ode113, MATLAB ode23s and MATLAB ode23t. However, the major issue is human liver consists of soft tissues. In modelling a soft tissue model, we need to understand the mechanical response of soft tissues to surgical manipulation. Any interaction between haptic device and the liver model may causes large deformation and topology change in the soft tissue model. Thus, this study investigates and presents the effect of varying mass, damping, stiffness coefficient on the nonlinear liver mass spring model. MATLAB performs and shows simulation results for each of the experiment. Additionally, the observed optimal dataset of liver behaviour is applied in SOFA (Simulation Open Framework Architecture) to visualize the major effect.

This article aims to look at the Malaysian civic education textbook through the multicultural curriculum framework, by using content analysis method. The article analyzes the civic textbook for secondary one to five, focusing on the theme of Warisan Kepelbagaian Budaya Malaysia. The major goal of multicultural education is to bridge the gap so as students from diverse background will experience educational equality. Extending from the multicultural education concept, Santora presented a multicultural curriculum framework that can empower students in the knowledge and skill dimension so that they can participate in a pluralistic society as a citizen. While Malaysia is a multicultural society by nature and by discourse, the question arise as what kind of multicultural concept is presented in the textbook and if the concept is aligned or shaping the multiculturalism concept in the society. The preliminary findings show that the concept of multicultural presented in the textbook is very much highlighted to the differences of the different ethnicities, without the element of empowering students' participatory skills in a pluralistic society. In light of the findings, the multicultural concept is reflecting the national discourse of multiculturalism, acting as an agent to bring stabilization to the country.

The skill of a successful operation requires a thorough understanding on the particular organs, perhaps de facto surgery is complex nowadays. Therefore, surgical simulator has become an alternative demanding tool among the surgeons to practice and conducting pre-operation planning. Due to the ease of implementation of Mass Spring Model (MSM), the context of MSM has been extended to real-time invasive surgical simulator. However, the remaining drawback of MSM is the selection of parameter-stiffness. In this research, the fuzzy knowledge based system is introduced into the MSM. We present an improved MSM to simulate the liver deformation for surgery simulation. The underlying MSM is redesigned where the parameters are determined by using knowledge-based fuzzy logic. Comparison between different fuzzy approaches such as Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Sets (IT2), Mamdani and Sugeno are made. Among the three fuzzy approaches, IT2 has the highest similarity with the benchmark model. The stiffness values estimated by fuzzy approaches are in very good agreement with the benchmark result as each of the respective fuzzy approach graphs share the similar trend of displacement and velocity with the benchmark model.