Tool/tissues interaction modeling for transluminal angioplasty simulation

In this paper, a simulation environment is described for balloon dilation during percutaneus transluminal angioplasty. It means simulating tool/tissues interactions involved in the inflation of a balloon by considering patient specific data. In this context, three main behaviors have been identified: soft tissues, crush completely under the effect of the balloon, calcified plaques, do not admit any deformation but could move in deformable structures and blood vessel wall and organs, try to find their original forms. A deformable soft tissue model is proposed, based on the enhanced chainmail method to take into account tissues deformation during dilatation. We improved the original chainmail method with a "forbidden zone" step to facilitate tool/tissues interactions. The simulation was implemented using five key steps: 1) initialization of balloon parameters; 2) definition of the data structure; 3) dilatation of the balloon and displacement approximation; 4) final position estimation by an elastic relaxation; and 5) interpolation step for visualization. Preliminary results obtained from patient CT data are reported.