Linear elastic fracture model for brain surgery simulation

Blunt dissection is a fundamental technique in brain surgery to expose an affected or to separate tissues without cutting. This paper addresses a linear elastic fracture model to simulate blunt dissection in a virtual brain surgery. Blunt dissection is simulated by fracturing a linear elastic finite elements when the stress applied to the element exceeds the specified fracture stress. However if an element is fractured without any consideration for connections with adjacent elements, the fracture may produce some structurally unstable elements. The structurally unstable elements cause computational instability. In order to avoid this instability problem, an element fracture method is proposed. The fracture model is verified by comparing the results of blunt dissection simulation with the result of experiments.