A considerable amount of effort has been aimed towards developing real-time deformable objects for surgical simulation, but very little work has been aimed towards including physiology within the soft tissue models. A simulator that links the structural and functional aspects of the human body would allow the user to develop a better understanding of the intrinsic link between anatomy and physiology.

This positional paper discusses the challenges facing the creation of and the development of an integrated physiological and anatomical soft tissue model for use in surgical simulators. It explores the artificial dichotomy between anatomy and physiology and the issues it raises, by considering a suturing simulator capable of modelling ischaemia.