Speed‐up of radiation treatment planning using a workstation cluster

Abstract

AbstractIn treatment planning in a heavy particle cancer radiation facility which is utilized by multiple remote medical institutions, it is necessary to calculate accurately the three‐dimensional dose distribution within the body of the patient in order to achieve efficient treatment. However, this presents a problem, since a long processing time is needed, which degrades the efficiency of treatment planning. In order to handle this problem, the authors used a cluster system in which Alpha 21164A CPUs were connected over a 100 Mbit/s Ethernet to speed up the dose distribution calculation (Dose) and digital reconstructed X‐ray image regeneration (DRR) by parallel processing. Parallel calculation is performed by segmenting the calculation area. The communication time among processors is reduced by data compression, and the load is made uniform by assigning more than one area to a processor. As a result of evaluation experiments, calculations performed iteratively by varying parameters at the actual site of medical care were accelerated by using 10 processors, by a factor of 7 for Dose, and 9 for DRR. In other words, the speed was improved in proportion to the number of processors. This implies that processing which has required several tens of seconds can now be handled in 3 to 6 seconds, which is short enough for the user to wait before the terminal. The objective is to make the system usable by multiple remote medical institutions by refining system functions such as fault recovery in order to ensure its reliability as a calculation server. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 35(8): 96–106, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/scj.10277