Dissection simulation of deformable objects using the extended finite element method

Abstract

In this paper, we present a fast and robust haptic system for a FEM-based dissection simulation built on top of open source software packages. Our system integrates the extended finite element (XFEM) into these packages in order to model the deformation of a dissected body without introducing any topological changes to the underlying volumetric tetrahedral mesh. We develop a semi-progressive cutting method based on a local neighborhood search on the tetrahedral mesh, which avoids the computational cost of a global intersection test. The performance of our system is tested on a low-end commercial desktop PC to demonstrate the feasibility of real-time dissection simulation that is computationally inexpensive.