Scalable and accessible personalized photodynamic therapy optimization with FullMonte and PDT-SPACE.

Abstract

.Significance: Open-source software packages have been extensively used in the past three decades in medical imaging and diagnostics, aiming to study the feasibility of the application ex vivo. Unfortunately, most of the existing open-source tools require some software engineering background to install the prerequisite libraries, choose a suitable computational platform, and combine several software tools to address different applications.Aim: To facilitate the use of open-source software in medical applications, enabling computational studies of treatment outcomes prior to the complex in-vivo setting.Approach: FullMonteWeb, an open-source, user-friendly web-based software with a graphical user interface for interstitial photodynamic therapy (iPDT) modeling, visualization, and optimization, is introduced. The software can perform Monte Carlo simulations of light propagation in biological tissues, along with iPDT plan optimization. FullMonteWeb installs and runs the required software and libraries on Amazon Web Services (AWS), allowing scalable computing without complex set up.Results: FullMonteWeb allows simulation of large and small problems on the most appropriate compute hardware, enabling cost improvements of versus always running on a single platform. Case studies in optical property estimation and diffuser placement optimization highlight FullMonteWeb’s versatility.Conclusion: The FullMonte open source suite enables easier and more cost-effective in-silico studies for iPDT.