A Study of Speed of the Boundary Element Method as applied to the Realtime Computational Simulation of Biological Organs

TL;DR

This paper investigates the feasibility of real-time biological organ simulation using the Boundary Element Method, leveraging GPU and cluster computing, and finds BEM can achieve real-time performance under linear elastostatic assumptions.

Contribution

It demonstrates for the first time that BEM can be used for real-time biological organ simulation with linear material models, using GPU and cluster acceleration.

Findings

BEM can achieve real-time performance with linear elastostatic models

GPU and cluster computing significantly speed up BEM calculations

Nonlinear models may not be feasible for real-time BEM simulation

Abstract

In this work, possibility of simulating biological organs in realtime using the Boundary Element Method (BEM) is investigated. Biological organs are assumed to follow linear elastostatic material behavior, and constant boundary element is the element type used. First, a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is used to speed up the BEM computations to achieve the realtime performance. Next, instead of the GPU, a computer cluster is used. Results indicate that BEM is fast enough to provide for realtime graphics if biological organs are assumed to follow linear elastostatic material behavior. Although the present work does not conduct any simulation using nonlinear material models, results from using the linear elastostatic material model imply that it would be difficult to obtain realtime performance if highly nonlinear material models that properly characterize biological organs are used. Although the use of BEM for the simulation of biological organs is not new, the results presented in the present study are not found elsewhere in the literature.