Efficient suturing of deformable models

Suturing is a fundamental operation in surgical procedures. Simulation of suturing involves the simulation of needle–tissue and thread–tissue interaction, as well as contact between sutured boundaries. In this work, robust methods are proposed for an efficient finite element-based suture simulation. Contact conditions are modeled using complementarity relations. By exploiting adjacency relationships inherent to simplicial meshes and decomposing rigid body motion into sliding and bulk-deforming components, needle driving can be simulated in real time without introducing any new mesh elements. In addition, a computationally efficient formulation of thread pulling is presented. These techniques are implemented and tested in a prototype system which allows for interactive simulation of suturing with high resolution models.