Filasofia: A Framework for Streamlined Development of Real-Time Surgical Simulations

Virtual reality simulation has become a popular approach for training and assessing medical students. It offers diverse scenarios, realistic visuals, and quantitative performance metrics for objective evaluation. However, creating these simulations can be time-consuming and complex, even for experienced users. The SOFA framework is an open-source solution that efficiently simulates finite element (FE) models in real-time. Yet, some users find it challenging to navigate the software due to the numerous components required for a basic simulation and their variability. Additionally, SOFA has limited visual rendering capabilities, leading developers to integrate other software for high-quality visuals. To address these issues, we developed Filasofia, a dedicated framework that simplifies development, provides modern visualization, and allows fine-tuning using SOFA objects. Our experiments demonstrate that Filasofia outperforms conventional SOFA simulations, even with real-time subdivision. Our design approach aims to streamline development while offering flexibility for fine-tuning. Future work will focus on further simplification of the development process for users.