Reiner Wilhelms
A software library of C++ class objects for
biological structure modeling.
Abstract:The deformation of biological tissues during the speech production process is a non-linear and non-stationary problem. The central reason, that commercial FEM packages can not easily be applied to active biological tissue deformation, can be found in the particularities of the stress generating mechanism. In structural mechanics, active stress generation as by human musculature is a very rare case. Therefore it is not surprising that special software for this purpose is not available to my knowledge.
Another limitation can be found in computer-aided design programs for solid design. If we want to model tissues with finite element simulation methods we need to fully describe element by element, a complex material structure which does not lend itself for solid formation from surface definition. The FEM modeling of biological tissue can be seen as definition of scalar- and vector-valued data on a topological cell structure, where each cell usually corresponds to a finite element. In general, the cell structure itself can not be generated by automatic means, such as automatic grid generation techniques. For these reasons special graphic design tools are required.
The availability of new programming methods lends additional credence to the writing of a new library. The use of the programming language C++, in combination with tools for symbolic mathematics (in the present case Mathematica), allows and demands clearer structuring, true modularity and real data encapsulation.
Mathematica is used in the library under development for automatic program generation.
(This study was condected by the author at ATR during the period from April to September 1992.)