The PhD vacancy is available in the section Mechanics of Materials of the Mechanical Engineering department and is part of the large-scale collaborative European project TASTI (Application-TAilored SynThetic Image generation). The PhD student will be supervised by prof.dr. ir. Olaf van der Sluis, dr.ir. Joris Remmers and dr.ir. Clemens Verhoosel.
Project backgroundDue to the large variety of medical procedures, it is almost impossible to provide in-hospital training to the staff on all procedures. Simulated training environments provide this large variety by using synthetic images. To be able to use these simulations for training medical staff on complex procedures, the current state-of-the-art simulators are extended by including synthetic images through highly accurate interacting digital twins of interventional devices and patient tissues. Through integration with simulation equipment from Mentice (Sweden), the medical staff will be able to practice a full procedure in a realistic simulation environment, including accurate haptic feedback. Moreover, synthetic X-ray images will be used to create a realistic virtual test environment for early validation of new concepts or usability of new features - even before the final hardware is available. In this PhD project, we will develop an efficient and accurate computational model of the interaction of the devices with human tissue that will be used to generate the synthetic X-Ray images.
Job descriptionReduced-order models (ROM), as efficient mathematical representations of high-fidelity models, promise to reach (near) real-time simulation capability. The research will focus on developing fast and robust methods for adapting reduced order models to new sets of parameters, either based on orthogonal decomposition or generalized decomposition methods. The challenges that will be addressed are the ability to deal with geometric and material nonlinearities, history-dependency and dynamically changing three-dimensional contact, which are required ingredients for meaningful simulations of medical procedures. In addition, to describe the interaction between medical devices and human tissues (e.g., blood vessels) accurately, virtual patient databases will be developed to represent variability in sizes and shapes using fully versatile geometry representation techniques such as NURBS, as input for physics-based simulations. These geometry models will be derived in such a way that details can be added when needed.
Early Philips prototype of a virtual image guided therapy training environment (for medical staff) using synthetic images.
Section descriptionThe research activities of the Mechanics of Materials group (
www.tue.nl/mechmat) concentrate on the fundamental understanding of various macroscopic problems in materials processing and forming, which emerge from the physics and the mechanics of the underlying material microstructure. The main challenge is the accurate prediction of mechanical properties of materials with complex microstructures, with a direct focus on industrial needs. The thorough understanding and modelling of 'unit' processes that can be identified in the complex evolving microstructure is thereby a key issue. The group has a unique research infrastructure, both from an experimental and computational perspective. The Multi-Scale Lab allows for quantitative in-situ microscopic measurements during deformation and mechanical characterization and constitutes the main source for all experimental research on various mechanical aspects of materials within the range of 10-9 - 10-2 m. In terms of computer facilities, several multiprocessor-multi-core computer clusters are available, as well as a broad spectrum of in-house and commercial software.