-------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Sim4Life V6.0 Release Notes -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- Release Date: 27.10.2020 With the release of Sim4Life V6.0, we are introducing new features and extensions for our users. It also includes a series of bug fixes and improvements over the previous Sim4Life V5.2.2. Sim4Life now permits to accurately and efficiently deal with the neural sensing - the simulation of measurable electric signals resulting from neural activity. This allows to predict measurable signals (e.g., compound action potentials) in and outside the human/animal anatomy, for the first time without relying on simplifications of the dielectric environment. Sim4Life V6.0 is further enhancing the existing mesher engines by introducing powerful tools allowing to control mesh generation and adapting meshes for maximal flexibility and fidelity. Special emphasis has also been placed on enhancing Sim4Life's 5G Simulation Toolbox with a streamlined general-purpose Surface-Averaged Power Density Evaluator - being fully compliant with the latest draft of IEC/IEEE 63195. Moreover, the entire user workflow of the 5G Toolbox is significantly faster. An additional highlight of the new release is the feature allowing direct import of magnetic field probe measurements from the DASY8 Module WPT & MAGPy into Sim4Life to simulate the induced electric field and the psSAR inside complex phantoms, e.g., ViP models or the newly introduced library of ViP hand models. Finally, the V6.0 release includes the support for new material models for the FDTD/CUDA and the unstructured LF FEM solvers, even faster industry leading HPC/CUDA based solvers, new animal models, and a Sim4Life API upgrade to Python 3. This document summarizes the features, modules, enhancements, known bugs, workarounds, and other important issues to be aware of in this release. IMPORTANT Sim4Life V6.0 now includes the new Flex tools (upgrade to 11.17.1) thus, we kindly request all our users installing this version to uninstall their current license servers and reinstall the license using Sim4Life V6.0 "Install License" tool under "Licensing Tools" in Start menu. -------------------------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Installation Requirements 2. Supported OS 3. New Features & Enhancements 3.1. Modeling 3.2. Simulation 3.3. Analysis 3.4. Modules 3.5. Python 3.6. Interface 4. List of Main Bugs (Selection) Fixed Since Last Release 5. Known Issues -------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Installation Requirements -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Administrator rights are required during the installation process. - NVIDIA graphics card, with support for OpenGL versions higher than v3.0. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Supported OS -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Windows Server 2012 R2 - Windows 7 64 bit - Windows 8 64 bit - Windows 8.1 64 bit - Windows 10 64 bit Sim4Life V6.0 uses Acceleware's Catania library version 11.3.1. Please get the latest NVIDIA driver for your hardware from the Acceleware website: https://acceleware.com/fdtd-11.3.1. Please note that only NVIDIA GPUs with CUDA Compute Capability 2.0 or higher are supported by both the Sim4Life CUDA and AXE solvers. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. New Features & Enhancements -------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.1. Modeling - New modeling tools to support the creation of implant lead trajectories, including a tool to smoothly join splines, and another tool to create spline loops with a given radius and orientation at a user-defined location. - Projection tool allowing to project multiple solid regions (CAD assemblies, e.g., electrodes or device parts) on a target surface. useful for placing devices on the skin or organ/tissue surface in anatomical models. - New posable monkey anatomical model with details in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) to extend the ViZoo family. - Dedicated ViP Hands Library, consisting of 12 right posable hands and parts of the forearm. - Support of refinement regions in Octree-based mesher. - "Merge" operation to create a multi-material 2D model from 2D outlines/covered regions. - New Boolean imprint-like operation to create a patch on the target. - Update of DXF importer/converter. 3.2. Simulation - New functionality of T-NEURO Module to accurately and efficiently deal with neural sensing - the simulation of measurable electric signals resulting from neural activity. - Capability of dealing with any heterogeneous, anisotropic dielectric environment model, including the most complex anatomical representations. - Anisotropic materials support for EM FDTD CUDA accelerated solvers. - Set of tools for LF FEM solvers to create anisotropic conductivity distributions - particularly important in the low frequency regime, where the longitudinal conductivity can be up to ten times higher than transversal conductivity, e.g., in neural tissues - or to extract directional information from MRI DTI data. - Refactored and optimized FDTD/CUDA-based EM solvers to run simulations on Volta and Turing GPU architectures. - Automatic simulation and analysis process for WPT compliance assessment by integrating between measurement and simulation systems. - Import of Magnetic fields measured with the MAGPy probe using DASY8 Module WPT into Sim4Life and use of the data to simulate the induced electric field and peak spatial SAR inside a conductive phantom. 3.3. Analysis - Hessian Calculator: new calculator permitting the efficient calculation of the Hessian matrix and its decomposition into Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors. It provides a 3D-generalized, best/worst-case equivalent to the Activation Function concept, which is a powerful predictor of spike initiation locations and an estimator of stimulation thresholds. - Support for inclusion of losses in SIBCs. - Sleek option to slice a model from the slice field viewer which generates a cross-section visualization of the (selected) model parts, either as outlines or filled areas. - Support of importing 3D medical image formats, including Nifty, Analyze, UNC Metaheader and other commonly used formats (e.g., also allowing to import vector or tensor component images). 3.4. Modules 3.4.1 5G Toolkit - New power density algorithm fully compliant with the very latest draft of IEC/IEEE 63195, both on flat or curved surfaces. - Significantly faster power density evaluation. - Interpolation of EM field data onto the discretized evaluation surface before surface averages are computed, in compliance with IEC/IEEE 63195. - New feature of power density algorithm allowing to process data from cDASY6 mmWave/ICEy mmWave/Sim4life/SEMCAD X. 3.4.2 IMAnalytics & MRIxVIP - U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Acceptance of IMAnalytics and the field exposure libraries MRIxVIP from IT'IS as a Medical Device Development tool (MDDT). 3.5. Python - API of Sim4Life V6.0 now using Python 3 by default. - Legacy Python 2.7 version of the API available for download upon request. - New feature enabling to use the entire Sim4Life API without starting the graphical user interface (GUI). - Dedicated plugin enabling Python scripts for Sim4Life to be written, executed and debugged from Visual Studio Code. - New Python functions for surface projection tool and for other new modeling tools. 3.6. Interface - New download/notification tool for platform upgrades/installations. - New notification tool and improved download tool for ViP models. - License tools: Upgrade of FlexNet from 11.13.1 to 11.17.1 & installation of new dongle drivers 7.103. -------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. List of Main Bugs Fixed Since V5.2.2 Release -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Case 90292: Fix of under-performance of CUDA solver compared to Sim4Life V3.4 - Case 98088: Fix of "Access Violation" and crash issues when accessing Boolean operation and handling parametric entities in some cases - Case 98975: Fix of not showing input connection labels when Sweeper and mapping sensors used - Case 99983: Fix the bug preventing color-bar update in some cases - Case 107225: Fix the bug in Optimizer which prevents automatic deletion of temporary results - Case 115405: Fix the bug causing Mesh Refinement tool to fail when entities changed - Case 119199: Fix of wrongly ordered of simulation components in Explorer window when an old LF simulation project launched - Case 122939: Fix of 0°C line artifacts observed in the slice viewer of Thermal simulations when 'Continue Simulation' option enabled - Case 126852: Fix of Unstructured MQS simulation failure without any error information when wire source used with thin layers - Case 126966: Fix the issue of auto saving of Sim4Life file with new version number and date although the simulation project is not modified - Case 128207: Fix the issue in the SAPD report when SAPD algorithm used instead of fSAPD - Case 128596: Fix the issue of losing domain tags when merging two unstructured meshes - Case 130004: Fix the bug in topological voxeler which results in missing last voxel layer when PEC object terminated with PML - Case 131712: Fix in Field Combiner giving incorrect results when used with Point/Edge Sensors - Case 131776: Fix of license handling issue with Structured LF Solver GUI - Case 134326: Fix of the issue preventing IMAnalytics GUI to work when the installer with Python 3 used - Case 134879: Fix and improvement in Vector Potential Reconstruction Algorithm -------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Known Issues -------------------------------------------------------------------- - Case 32807: Instability for some rare dispersive material configurations - Case 40481: Python memory usage occasionally still occupied after resetting analysis - Case 47035: Random problems in visualization of Dispersive Viewer - Case 54000: Random element appearing in Gridder - Case 61881: Rare issue with distribution of the simulation job to the GPUs when using CUDA - Case 86865: Job priorities may not correspond to the job execution - Case 98764: Potentially decreased accuracy in rare specific events for sensor combiner of Far-field sensor - Case 124573: Streamline viewer occasionally showing artifacts near sources