This paper introduces a data-driven representation and modeling technique for simulating non-linear heterogeneous soft tissue. It simplifies the construction of convincing deformable models by avoiding complex selection and tuning of physical material parameters, yet retaining the richness of non-linear heterogeneous behavior. We acquire a set of example deformations of a real object, and represent each of them as a spatially varying stress-strain relationship in a finite-element model. We then model the material by non-linear interpolation of these stress-strain relationships in strain-space. Our method relies on a simple-to-build capture system and an efficient run-time simulation algorithm based on incremental loading, making it suitable for interactive computer graphics applications. We present the results of our approach for several nonlinear materials and biological soft tissue, with accurate agreement of our model to the measured data.

@Article\{BBOMPG09,
  author       = "Bickel, Bernd and Bächer, Moritz and Otaduy, Miguel A. and Matusik, Wojciech and Pfister, Hanspeter and Gross, Markus",
  title        = "Capture and Modeling of Non-Linear Heterogeneous Soft Tissue",
  journal      = "ACM Trans. on Graphics (Proc. of ACM SIGGRAPH)",
  number       = "3",
  volume       = "28",
  year         = "2009",
  url          = "http://gmrv.es/Publications/2009/BBOMPG09"
}