Deformation and Smooth Joining of Mesh Models for Cardiac Surgical Simulation

This paper focuses on an important aspect of cardiac surgical simulation, which is the deformation of mesh models to form smooth joins between them. A novel algorithm based on the Laplacian deformation method is developed. It extends the Laplacian method to handle deformation of 2-manifold mesh models with 1-D boundaries, and joining of 1-D boundaries to form smooth joins. Test results show that the algorithm can produce a variety of smooth joins common in cardiac surgeries, and it is efficient for practical applications.