SOFA - Real-time multi-physics simulation with an emphasis on medical simulation
Channel: FOSDEM
Date: 2018-03-11

by Guillaume Paran and Hugo Talbot

At: FOSDEM 2017

Simulation Open Framework Architecture (SOFA) is an open source multiplatformframework primarily targeted at real-time physical simulation, with anemphasis on medical simulation.

It is mostly intended for the research community to help develop newalgorithms, but can also be used as an efficient prototyping tool or as aphysics engine.

Started in 2004, SOFA is currently developed by 4 research teams from Inria(french research institute): Mimesis, Imagine, Defrost and Asclepios.

Based on a C++ advanced software architecture, SOFA allows to:  \- Create **complex and evolving simulations** by combining new algorithmswith existing algorithms  \- Modify most parameters of the simulation (deformable behavior, surfacerepresentation, solver, constraints, collision algorithm, ...) by simplyediting an XML file  \- Build complex models from simpler ones using a scene graph description  \- Efficiently simulate the dynamics of interacting objects using **abstractequation solvers**  \- Reuse and easily compare a variety of available methods  \- Transparently **parallelize** complex computations using semantics based ondata dependencies  \- Use new generations of GPUs through the CUDA API to greatly improvecomputation times

Today, SOFA gathers more than 10 years of research in physics simulation. Manypublications were accepted, several simulators were developed and fivestartups were created.  The research topics are diverse:  \- **Solid mechanics** with the simulation of the brain, the eye, the heart,the liver, the bones  \- **Thermodynamics** with thermo-ablation of tumors  \- Many other topics as **image processing** , **Fluid dynamics** ,**animation** or **biological applications**


Room: H.2215 (Ferrer)
Scheduled start: 2017-02-05 12:20:00