Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

Sofa, ADT

SOFA Large Scale Development Initiative (ADT) : the SOFA project (Simulation Open Framework Archi- tecture) is an international, multi-institution, collaborative initiative, aimed at developing a flexible and open source framework for interactive simulations. This will eventually establish new grounds for a widely usable standard system for long-term research and product prototyping, ultimately shared by academic and industrial sites. The SOFA project involves 3 Inria teams, SHACRA, EVASION and ASCLEPIOS. The development program of the ADT started in 2007. After 3 years of development, more than 600,000 lines of code have been developed, 80,000 downloads of SOFA have been counted on the Inria gForge, and we are about to finalize a new version of the public release.

Sofa Intermeds, AEN

SOFA Large Scale Initiative on Medical Simulation (AEN): The variety and complexity of Medicine, as well as its ethical importance in today’s society, have been a strong motivation in many scientific and technical disciplines. The medical field has already been a domain of application for computer science and several tools, such as image processing, are now an integral part of modern medicine. Yet, there is no question that the integration of new technologies in Medicine will continue to rise in the future. In this context, the simulation of medical procedures, whether it is targeted at education, planning of interventions, or even guidance during complex procedures, will be a major element of the Medicine of the twenty-first century. The main objective of this large scale initiative is to leverage expertise from a few research teams at Inria to speed up the development of new ideas, models, algorithms in this very multi-disciplinary field. This initiative started in 2008, and involves several teams at Inria: SHACRA, EVASION, ASCLEPIOS, MOAIS, MAGRIT, and BUNRAKU. This program has been evaluated by a group of international experts in October 2010.

ANR Acoustic

The main objective of this project is to develop an innovative strategy based on models for helping decision-making process during surgical planning in Deep Brain Stimulation. Models will rely on different levels involved in the decision-making process; namely multimodal images, information, and knowledge. Two types of models will be made available to the surgeon: patient specific models and generic models. The project will develop methods for 1) building these models and 2) automatically computing optimal electrodes trajectories from these models taking into account possible simulated deformations occurring during surgery. The project belongs to the multidisciplinary domain of computer-assisted surgery (CAS). Computer assisted surgery aims at helping the surgeon with methods, tools, data, and information all along the surgical workflow. More specifically, the project addresses surgical planning and surgical simulation in Image Guided Surgery. It is related to the exponentially growing surgical treatment of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), originally developed in France by Pr. Benabid (Grenoble Hospital). The key challenges for this research project are 1) to identify, extract, gather, and make available the information and knowledge required by the surgeon for targeting deep brain structures for stimulation and 2) to realistically simulate the possible trajectories.

IHU, Strasbourg

Our team has been selected to be part of the IHU of Strasbourg. This new institute, for which funding (67M€) has just been announced, is a very strong innovative project of research dedicated to future surgery of the abdomen. It will be dedicated to minimally invasive therapies, guided by image and simulation. Based on interdisciplinary expertise of academic partners and strong industry partnerships, the IHU aims at involving several specialized groups for doing research and developments towards hybrid surgery (gesture of the surgeon and simulation-based guidance). Our group and SOFA have a important place in the project. For this reason, Stephane Cotin has moved to Strasbourg for two years (Sept 2011 to July 2013).

ANR IDeaS

IDeaS is a project targeted at per-operative guidance for interventional radiology procedures. Our main goal is to provide effective solutions for the two main drawbacks of interventional radiology procedures, namely: reduce radiation exposure and provide a fully 3D and interactive visual feedback during the procedure. To do so, our project relies on an original combination of computer vision algorithms and interactive physics-based medical simulation. Computer vision algorithms extract relevant information (like the actual projected shape of the guide-wire at any given time) from X-ray images, allowing adjusting the simulation to real data. Conversely, computer-based simulation is used as a sophisticated and trustful predictor for an improved initialization of computer vision tracking algorithms. Many outcomes may be expected both in scientific and clinical aspects. On the scientific side, we believe a better understanding of how real data and simulation should be merged and confronted must lead, as a natural by-product, to image-based figures of merit to actually validate computer-based simulation outputs against real and dynamic data. A more accurate identification of the factors limiting the realism of simulation should follow with a rebound impact on the quality of the simulation itself. An actual integration of a mechanical model into the loop will improve the tracking. We firmly believe mechanical constraints can supplement the image data such that dynamic single view reconstruction of the interventional devices will be possible. On the clinical side, using the prediction capabilities of the simulation may decrease the need for X-ray images at high rates, thus leading to lower exposure to radiations for the patients and surgical staff. Finally, the output of the simulation is the 3D shape of the tool (e.g. guide-wire or catheter), but not only. Additional information may be visualized, for instance pressure of the catheter on the arterial wall, to prevent vessel wall perforations, or reduce stress on the arterial wall to prevent spasm. More generally, richer information on the live procedure may help surgeons to reduce malpractice or medical errors.