Ambiente Virtual Interativo com Colisão e Deformação de Objetos para Treinamento Médico

Medical procedure training may benefit from the use of interactive virtual environments that simulate realistically user actions. The simulation must provide fast responses related to object collision, deformation, movement constraints or even produce forces and vibrations. This paper describes a methodology for creating a virtual environment for medical training. Classes and methods are designed and implemented in the environment through the Java programming language. Object collision and deformation methods are used to incorporate realism to the scene, which are complex and dependent issues on interaction information tracked in the virtual environment. In order to do that, a hybrid collision detection method has been developed to allow both precision regarding the existence of interpenetration between the objects and adequate response time, so that the user does not notice delays in the system. The modeled objects are represented by polygonal meshes. The collision detection between objects is based on hierarchical subdivision of space with octrees and face detection. The mass-spring deformation technique is used to simulate changes in the shape of the objects that collide. Experiments are conducted to demonstrate the functionality of the prototype.