GD Medical Pharma (Netherlands)

Virtual surgery simulation plays an increasingly important role as a planning aid for the surgeon. A reliable simulation method to predict the surgical outcome of breast reconstruction and breast augmentation procedures would be useful for ensuring a symmetrical and naturally looking result and for communication between the surgeon and the patient. In this paper, we extend our previously developed basic framework to simulate subglandular breast implantation with a more realistic interaction model for implant and tissue. We model both the breast tissue and the implant using Mass Tensor models, based on continuum mechanics of linear elastic materials. Appropriate boundary constraints are defined to mimic the interaction between the breast and the implant model, including sliding contacts. We illustrate our approach with a preliminary validation study on 4 patients, yielding a mean error between the simulated and the true post-operative breast geometry below 4 mm and maximal error below 9 mm, which is found to be sufficiently accurate for visual assessment in clinical practice