Press Release

Editor Contacts:

Bernt Nilsson, VP of Marketing
COMSOL Inc.
bernt@comsol.com




Ingrid Weber, Marketing Manager
Simpleware Ltd.
i.weber@simpleware.com

Simpleware and COMSOL Announce Partnership

Collaboration enhances biomedical and bioengineering design, modelling, and simulation

GRENOBLE, FRANCE (October 23, 2007) — Simpleware Ltd. (Exeter, UK) and COMSOL Inc. (Burlington, MA, USA) announced today at the COMSOL Users Conference 2007-Grenoble a partnership agreement to provide an export interface from Simpleware’s world-leading 3D image-based meshing software ⁺ScanFE™ to COMSOL Multiphysics® 3.4, the industry’s foremost multiphysics simulation environment. 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 ScanIP™ 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 www.simpleware.com. On the COMSOL web site, www.comsol.com, you can find full details on COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4.

About Simpleware

Simpleware provides and develops world-leading mesh generation software for the conversion of 3D scan data (e.g. MRI, CT, MicroCT, etc.) into high-quality computer models used for CAD, Finite Element simulation, and Rapid Prototyping. The ease and unprecedented accuracy with which models can be generated have opened up computational analysis (FEA and CFD) and rapid prototyping to a variety of research fields, including: Industrial Reverse Engineering, Implant Design and other Biomedical Engineering fields, Materials Research, Paleontology, Forensics, and Biomimicry. Simpleware provides what is effectively a 3D photocopier: three-dimensional replicas can be generated automatically based on scans. In parallel, computer simulations can be used to assess the suitability or performance of objects in operation. Unlike other approaches, Simpleware provides a complete software solution, and enables users to produce models in a fraction of the time taken with alternative software. For more information on Simpleware software and services, visit www.simpleware.com.

About COMSOL

COMSOL Multiphysics is the first software environment to provide scientists, engineers, and researchers with integrated, best-in-class technology for modeling, simulating, and discovering any system with both single or multiple physics phenomena. A broad range of discipline-specific modules extends the COMSOL environment for chemical engineering, earth science, electromagnetics, heat transfer, MEMS, and structural mechanics applications. COMSOL also offers the COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab®, which allows users to model reacting systems. COMSOL products are available for the Windows, Linux, Solaris, and the Macintosh operating systems. Full details about COMSOL Multiphysics and related products are available at www.comsol.com.