PLOMO Project

A Mutual Software Platform for Soft Tissues Physically-based Models Elaboration

Project PLOMO aims at the development of a common platform for physical models construction of human soft tissues starting from medical imaging data. By physical models we mean elastic biological tissues, fluids as well as fluid-structure interactions.

Competences necessary to the development of physical models come under the fields of

1. medical images segmentation;
2. geometrical reconstruction and 3D meshing;
3. biomechanical modelling;
4. in vivo measurement of the material constitutive laws and 
5. numerical analysis.

The PLOMO consortium proposes to join together, around this physical models construction topic, of seven universities from France, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil that work at least in one of the five fields listed above. Simultaneously with the research tasks that will be carried out in each academic partners, the PLOMO consortium will set up a scientific network allowing the definition of a common software platform for the development of physical models of biological soft tissues.

Keywords: TICs-Health, Medical Imaging, Meshes, Soft Tissues Modelling, Numerical Analysis.

Support France-South America collaboration in the field of creation of adaptive and powerful models, and biomechanical simulation of anatomical soft tissues.

The works carried out these last decades in the field of the generation, the treatment and the analysis of medical images (CT, IRM, US) had a great impact on the exercise of medicine. With these works, appeared new powerful and increasingly expensive equipments, such as. intra-operative MRI scanners that provide images collected during surgery.

All partners of the PLOMO consortium are aware that the developments which will be carried out during this the project must be adapted to South American reality. In other words, it is completely unrealistic to imagine products that are based on very expensive imaging devices. This is why we chose to mainly focus on the echographic (US) imaging modality, now established in a current way in South America.

As mentioned above, one of the main contributions of this program is to get the whole chain necessary for building physical models of human organs. This is sufficiently rare in this field to be underlined. Generally, when one carries out researches in a given step of the whole chain, one considers that the preceding stage was correctly realized, and that the following stage will adapt. The PLOMO project will try to have a global approach by putting in contact different communities and expertises. 

From the socio-economic point of view, the impact of the PLOMO project should also be very important, in particular from the social point of view, since its results will contribute to include/understand certain mechanisms and to improve significantly diagnosis and treatments. 

Finally, pre and post doctoral students will be integrated within this project framework (participation to a summer school, scientific exchanges), thus contributing to the formation of qualified personal with the explicit goal to install durably this activity in South America.