ArtiSynth: A Fast Interactive Biomechanical Modeling Toolkit Combining Multibody and Finite Element Simulation

ArtiSynth (www.artisynth.org) is an open source, Java-based biomechanical simulation environment for modeling complex anatomical systems composed of both rigid and deformable structures. Models can be built from a rich set of components, including particles, rigid bodies, finite elements with both linear and nonlinear materials, point-to-point muscles, and various bilateral and unilateral constraints including contact. A state-of-the-art physics simulator provides forward simulation capabilities that combine multibody and finite element models. Inverse simulation capabilities allow the computation of the muscle activations needed to achieve prescribed target motions. ArtiSynth is highly interactive, with component parameters and state variables exposed as properties that can be interactively read and adjusted as the simulation proceeds. Streams of input and output data, used for controlling or observing the simulation, can be viewed, arranged, and edited on an interactive timeline display, and support is provided for the graphical editing of model structures.