CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
23 October 2007
Product News
Simpleware and COMSOL Announce Partnership
Simpleware Ltd. (Exeter, UK) and COMSOL Inc. (Burlington, MA, USA) announced at the COMSOL Users Conference 2007-Grenoble a partnership agreement to provide an export interface from Simpleware's 3D image-based meshing software +ScanFET to COMSOL Multiphysics® 3.4. The interface enables biomedical and bioengineering users to directly export high-quality meshes of 3D MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), CT (computed tomography), and MicroCT (microcomputed tomography) scan data created with +ScanFE to COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 for modelling and simulation without requiring re-meshing or pre-processing.
"We are striving to provide best-in-class software solutions for all design, simulation, and product development needs," said Philippe Young, MD of Simpleware. "The partnership with COMSOL will further enhance our position as the leading provider of tools for the conversion of 3D images to simulation models."
A key component of Simpleware's ScanIPT suite of image-processing solutions, +ScanFE provides a powerful suite of algorithms and a robust toolset for converting segmented 3D image data into multi-part volumetric models. +ScanFE generates high-quality volume and surface meshes, contact surfaces, and material properties from the segmented data, all of which can now be directly exported to COMSOL Multiphysics.
Simpleware's new Export to COMSOL Multiphysics functionality is a simple two-step operation. First, ScanIP segments the regions of interest from the scan data, and then +ScanFE generates an input file for COMSOL Multiphysics. Once you import the file, you can leverage COMSOL to model, simulate, and to design biomedical applications such as hip joint replacements, vascular therapy, and drug delivery.
"The ability to create multiphysics models from MRI data is something that many of our biomed and bioengineering users have demanded," said Ed Fontes, VP of Applications at COMSOL. "This new cooperation with Simpleware places COMSOL Multiphysics on the leading edge of biomedical and bioengineering modelling, design, and simulation."
The combination of Simpleware's +ScanFE and COMSOL provides users across the biomechanics and materials science disciplines with an indispensable tool. Key benefits of the +ScanFE and COMSOL Multiphysics partnership include:
• The unique ability to create meshes from 3D scan data, such as MRI, CT and MicroCT, and directly make them available for true multiphysics simulations without intermediate steps such as re-meshing and pre-processing.
• The possibility to integrate CAD and image data interactively, and then automatically mesh the resulting combined model. Users can insert implants and blood stents into the original scan data and then run simulations involving complex interactions between implant, tissue, and blood.
• The capability to reconstruct and mesh separate parts yielding perfectly conforming interfaces (no gaps or overlaps). The properties and physics of the different parts and the interactions across the interfaces can be fully manipulated in the model set-up.
• The capacity for users to access application examples and exercises that lead them through the entire process from acquiring and exporting 3D scan data to full multiphysics modeling of complex geometries with multiple parts.
For more information about +ScanFE and the ScanIP suite of software for converting 3D images into high-quality meshes, visit Simpleware on the web at http://www.simpleware.com/ . On the COMSOL web site, http://www.comsol.com/ , you can find full details on COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4.
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