Research Project
8976373
? DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Simulation of the electromagnetic and thermal response of the human body heavily relies upon efficient computational models or phantoms. The 28 computational phantoms currently suggested for use by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety are mostly tied to specific, and generally expensive, simulation software packages. Platform-independent models suitable for all three major electromagnetic simulation methods, i.e. Finite Element Method, Method of Moments or Boundary Element Method, and Finite-Differences Time Domain, which are based on triangular surfaces meshes of individual tissues, become increasingly important today. Therefore, we hypothesize that a platform-independent accurate anatomical model will be an innovative starting point for the development of commercial applications. Specific Aim 1: Create an accurate platform-independent whole-body anatomical model from the VHP-Female dataset of the National Library of Medicine with over 100 individual parts. All platform-independent or triangular-surface models currently available in the market are strictly deterministic: individual triangular surface meshes cannot be deformed (except for the trivial scaling of the entire model) without intersecting with each other. Resolving such intersections, using for example ANSYS electromagnetic modelers, delays the mesh intersection check up to ten times with a total running time up to 20 hours. Therefore, the development of a deformation library, which will allows us to perform tissue sensitivity studies, implant sensitivity studies, ad account for human breathing, is in high demand. Our simple idea of a deformation library consists of a distinct subset of correctly-deformed triangular surface meshes for a number of nearby organs, which will reflect common pathological variations in tissue composition, the presence of major implants, and tissue pulsation. These meshes will be substituted into the base phantom when necessary. The deformation library will be created and modified as required using an proprietary morphing workflow for triangular surface meshes and, in the most important case of normal deformations, for BREP (Boundary Representation) non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) surfaces. Therefore, we hypothesize that the platform-independent anatomical model augmented with a comprehensive and anatomically-correct tissue deformation library will be an innovative commercial product with an immediate demand. As such, it will significantly contribute to public health and have a market advantage when compared to currently available options. Specific Aim 2: Create an anatomically-correct deformation library with minimum user intervention for the platform-independent computational model from VHP-Female dataset of the National Library of Medicine.
