Cutting Simulation in Unity 3D Using Position Based Dynamics with Various Refinement Levels

Abstract

Augmented and Virtual Reality-based surgical simulations have become some of the fastest-developing areas, due to the recent technological advances and changes, in surgical education. Cutting simulation is a crucial part of the virtual surgery simulation in which an incision operation is performed. It is a complex process that includes three main tasks: soft body simulation, collision detection and handling, and topological deformation of the soft body. In this paper, considering the content developer’s convenience, the deformable object simulation, using position-based dynamics (PBD), was applied in the Unity 3D environment. The proposed algorithm for fast collision detection and handling between the cutting tool and the deformable object uses a sweep surface. In case of incision, the algorithm updates the mesh topology by deleting intersected triangles, re-triangulation, and refinement. In the refinement part, the boundary edges threshold was used to match the resolution of new triangles to the existing mesh triangles. Additionally, current research is focused on triangle surface meshes, which help to reduce the computational costs of the topology modifications. It was found that the algorithm can successfully handle arbitrary cuts, keeping the framerate within interactive and, in some cases, in the real-time.