Unified Framework for Real-Time Fluid Simulation in Virtual Rotator Cuff Arthroscopic Skill Trainer (ViRCAST)

This study introduces a unified real-time fluid simulation framework for virtual surgical simulation. In the context of this work, we aim to simulate thermo- and fluid dynamics in our Virtual Rotator Cuff Arthroscopic Skill Trainer (ViRCAST). Fluid Dynamics directly dictates the flow of the irrigation solutions, and thermodynamics dictates the electrocautery procedure in arthroscopic procedures. An efficient and generalized numerical approach is essential for robust modeling of liquid and heat flow, as the medium of fluid flow changes continuously as the simulation progresses. In addition, these physics models should work in harmony while interacting. We used a numerical computational technique called Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to model heat transfer and liquid simulation under a single framework. Our formulation intends to virtually simulate the complete fluid motion of the irrigation solution and the mechanism of conduction and convection of heat flow within the shoulder cavity in real time. In addition to the core function of the systems, our study also uses various methods to simulate the interaction between the physical systems and models. In this study, we present the preliminary results of our unified SPH approach to simulate the electrocautery process and liquid flow in the context of arthroscopic rotator cuff surgery in ViRCAST. We investigated the solver's performance by recording the average frames per second (FPS) for the simulation, which is executed for a minute. The average FPS was 202 Hz. We parallelized our framework at the loop level using OpenMP, which resulted in an increase of 46% in FPS.