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Collaborative Research Center (SFB/Transregio 125) "Cognition-Guided Surgery" - Project I-03: "Functional Modeling"

Aims and Objectives

In the framework of the collaborative research center (SFB TRR 125) „Cognition-guided Surgery“, the EMCL-based project I-03 „Functional Modeling“ simulates physiological processes in the human body, above all soft tissue behavior under the effects of natural and external forces during surgical manipulation, and the fluid dynamics in the cardiovascular system. It thus delivers essential information on the development of a cognitive surgery assistance and simulation system.

Based on the mathematical and physical modeling of deformable objects and flow processes, the majority of current surgery simulators today use the finite element method (FEM). Considering the results of elasticity theory, and accounting for specific material parameters of the soft tissue dealt with, the FEM allows for the realistic simulation of the behavior of elastic bodies under the effect of external forces and prescribed displacements, such as given during operations due to surgical manipulation. Similarly, built up on the theory of computational fluid dynamics, the FEM enables to investigate on flow processes, turbulence behaviors and stress distributions on vessel walls.

The first main focus of the project work lies on the development and implementation of methods for the prediction of soft tissue deformations during the surgical operation of a minimally-invasive mitral valve reconstruction. The simulation is fully integrated into the complex biomechanical modeling workflow in order to allow for smooth usage, e.g., by surgeons. Also, we consider the simulation sensitivity with respect to distinct target effects arising out of forces and momentums in the context of surgical applications. The second focus is put on the enhancement of 4D PC-MRI in an aortic phantom considering numerical simulations. The data structures and numerical simulation algorithms are based on the inhouse-developed multi-purpose finite element software toolkit HiFlow3, and implemented with respect to High-Performance Computing (HPC) methods and techniques, in order to allow for almost real-time application.

Finally, we integrate our simulation tools into the knowlege-management system infrastructure of the SFB, in order to allow back-and-forth improvements, and to maximally benefit from the surgical expert knowledge and data/information given in the knowlege base.

Research Topics

  • Functional modeling and mathematical description of biomechanical processes.
  • Elasticity simulations, CFD simulations, FSI simulations in the context of the human body and during surgical manipulation.
  • Real-time capacity and acceleration of surgical simulations by means of dedicated and highly-optimized numerical methods.
  • Adaptation of linear solvers, and development of highly-efficient, problem-specific solvers.
  • Implementation of specific numerical methods based on the application of new computer architectures (GPGPU, ManyCore, ...).
  • Application of innovative, sensitive approaches, based on the coupling of experimental data and data taken from knowledge bases as well as from numerical simulations.
  • Semantic modelling of surgical simulation-based treatment workflows for cognition-guided surgery.
  • Integration of biomechanical simulations into the clinical treatment workflow and into surgery assistance systems.
  • Application of methods of Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) to surgery simulations.

Funding

The whole collaborative research center SFB TRR 125 is funded by the German Research Community (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), firstly, for a period of 4 years, however, having a reasonable chance of extension for up to 12 years.

Partners

  • Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
  • Universitätsklinikum Heidelberg
  • Universität Heidelberg
  • Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ)

People from EMCL

Contact

  • Dipl.-Math. techn. Nicolai Schoch

Project Links

Conferences

 

Publications

  • Nicolai Schoch, Fabian Kißler, Markus Stoll, Sandy Engelhardt, Raffaele de Simone, Ivo Wolf, Rolf Bendl, Vincent Heuveline
    "Comprehensive patient-specific information preprocessing for cardiac surgery simulations"
    accepted for publication in the International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery (IJCARS), Special Issue: IPCAI2016, (DOI: 10.1007/s11548-016-1397-0), 2016.
  • Nicolai Schoch, Patrick Philipp, Tobias Weller, Sandy Engelhardt, Mykola Volovyk, Andreas Fetzer, Marco Nolden, Raffaele De Simone, Ivo Wolf, Maria Maleshkova, Achim Rettinger, Rudi Studer, and Vincent Heuveline
    "Cognitive tools pipeline for assistance of mitral valve surgery"
    Proceedings of "SPIE. Medical Imaging 2016", 2016.
  • Jonas Kratzke, Fabian Rengier, Christian Weis, Carsten Beller and Vincent Heuveline
    "In vitro flow assessment: From PC-MRI to computational fluid dynamics including fluid-structure interaction"
    Proceedings of "SPIE. Medical Imaging 2016", 2016.
  • Andreas Fetzer, Jasmin Metzger, Darko Katic, Keno Maerz, Martin Wagner, Patrick Philipp, Sandy Engelhardt, Tobias Weller, Sascha Zelzer, Alfred Michael Franz, Nicolai Schoch, Vincent Heuveline, Maria Maleshkova, Achim Rettinger, Stefanie Speidel, Ivo Wolf, Hannes Kenngott, Arianeb Mehrabi, Beat Mueller-Stich, Lena Maier-Hein, Hans-Peter Meinzer, and Marco Nolden
    "Towards an open-source semantic data infrastructure for integrating clinical and scientific data in cognition-guided surgery"
    Proceedings of "SPIE. Medical Imaging 2016", 2016.
  • Jonas Kratzke, Michael Schick and Vincent Heuveline
    "Fluid-Structure Interaction Simulation of an Aortic Phantom with uncertain Young's Modulus using the Polynomial Chaos Expansion"
    Published at Applied Mechanics and Materials, 2015.
  • Nicolai Schoch, Fabian Kißler, Markus Stoll, Sandy Engelhardt, Raffaele de Simone, Ivo Wolf, Rolf Bendl, Vincent Heuveline
    "Comprehensive Pre- and Post-Processing for Numerical Simulations in Cardiac Surgery Assistance"
    Preprint Issue (No. 02/2015), accepted for the Preprint Series of the Engineering Mathematics and Computing Lab (EMCL), 2015.
  • Jonas Kratzke, Nicolai Schoch, Christian Weis, Matthias Mueller-Eschner, Stefanie Speidel, Mina Farag, Carsten Beller, and Vincent Heuveline
    "Enhancing 4D PC-MRI in an aortic phantom considering numerical simulations"
    Proceedings of "SPIE 9412, Medical Imaging 2015: Physics of Medical Imaging", 2015.
  • Nicolai Schoch, Sandy Engelhardt, Norbert Zimmermann, Stefanie Speidel, Raffaele De Simone, Ivo Wolf, and Vincent Heuveline
    "Integration of a biomechanical simulation for mitral valve reconstruction into a knowledge-based surgery assistance system"
    Proceedings of "SPIE 9415, Medical Imaging 2015: Image-Guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions and Modeling", 2015.
  • Christoph Paulus, Stefan Suwelack, Nicolai Schoch, Stefanie Speidel, Rüdiger Dillmann and Vincent Heuveline
    "Simulation of Complex Cuts in Soft Tissue with the Extended Finite Element Method (X-FEM)"
    Preprint Issue (No. 02/2014), accepted for the Preprint Series of the Engineering Mathematics and Computing Lab (EMCL), 2014.
  • Nicolai Schoch, Fabian Kissler
    "HiFlow3-Tutorial: Elasticity Simulation using HiFlow3"
    HiFlow3-Tutorial, for "HiFlow3", Documentation and Tutorials, 2014.
  • Nicolai Schoch, Sandy Engelhardt, Norbert Zimmermann, Stefanie Speidel, Raffaele De Simone, Ivo Wolf, and Vincent Heuveline
    "Integration einer Biomechanischen Simulation zur Unterstützung von Mitralklappen-Rekonstruktionen in ein Wissensbasiertes Assistenzsysystem"
    Article in "Tagungsband der CURAC 2014", Deutsche Gesellschaft für Computer- und Roboterassistierte Chirurgie, e.V., 2014.
  • Stefan Suwelack, Markus Stoll, Sebastian Schalck, Nicolai Schoch, Rüdiger Dillmann, Rolf Bendl, Vincent Heuveline, and Stefanie Speidel
    "The Medical Simulation Markup Language (MSML) – Simplifying the Biomechanical Modeling Workflow"
    Proceedings of "Medicine Meets Virtual Reality, MMVR2014", 2014.
  • Nicolai Schoch, Stefan Suwelack, Rüdiger Dillmann and Vincent Heuveline
    "Simulation of Surgical Cutting of Soft Tissue using the X-FEM"
    Preprint Issue (No. 04/2013), accepted for the Preprint Series of the Engineering Mathematics and Computing Lab (EMCL), 2013.