2. Objectives
• Cancer is Europe’s second largest killer
• is a suite of remote tools to help medical physicists in the
definition of treatment plans and their verification using MC
• This experiment focuses on the feasibility of using Cloud for such
services, using treatment verification as an example.
– CloudERT must produce results ASAP by exploiting the Cloud resources.
– Transferring the computing to Cloud
• User Community
– Medical physicists
– 65 users from 47 hospitals
3. Software Design
• Steps 2 and 4 in parallel
• Programmed used COMPSs and GW
COMPSs programming model
4. Software Design
• GW Programming mode
Data Access
Service
wrapper
Tver 1
Client Clo
Clo
wrapper
ud Local
Alignment
wrapper
Data transfer
udDrive
Alignment
wrapper
worker
wrapper
Alignment
Client
worker
worker
BEAMnrc
Execution
eIMRT
Service
wrapper
Job Submission
Tver 2
Client
Cloud
Storage
Clo
Clo
ud Clo
wrapper
Alignment udLocal
Dri ud
wrapper
Alignment
worker Dri
Drive
wrapper
Alignment Dri
wrapper
worker
worker
DOSXYZnrc
Clients to
App-
Standard
specific
wrapper
VENUS-C
Tver 3
VENUS-C Local
Application
External Standard Drive
Repository
component
5. Benefits of using Venus-C
• Computing power -> Cloud
• Reducing the entry cost. Business opportunity.
• Scales well with the problem size, reducing the time
to solve a single case.
• The capability of choosing the number of resources
used and change them dynamically.
6. Lessons Learnt
• The GW & COMPSs frameworks fit well the execution
model of eIMRT.
• A better logging and error management is needed.
• Work in easing the deployment of the service side is
still needed, maybe by providing preconfigured
images.
7. Example Case
• A radiotherapist wants to verify a radiation therapy treatment.
• He select the desired input files for the treatment
• Finally he obtains the calculated dose
• Synthetic case based on Carpet or Quasimodo
– single segment treatment
– 300.000 BEAMnrc histories
– 3.000.000 DOSXYZnrc histories.
– 60.000 histories per task
• Input Files
File Description Size
Cesga.tar.gz Java application plus Linux scripts 17.8kB
Venus-c-filesystem.gz Tar file with executables, libraries and other Monte Carlo data. 18.2 MB
MapData.raw Patient’s CT in internal format 60.3MB
Rtplan.xml RTplan in XML format 20.6kB
Tomograph.ramp Data to convert CT from Hounsfield units to densities 337 B
Useracc.config File with user’s specific parameters for the used LINAC 55B
8. Restults
Execution times
Phase COMPSs MS Azure
Sample Calculated dose
Tver1 15 15
BEAMnrc (average) 795 445
Tver2 38 21
DOSXYZnrc (average) 533 316
Tver3 24 17
Real case execution (100 tasks)
9. Conclusions
• VENUS-C CloudERT is a client application consuming an eIMRT
processing service deployed in the cloud.
• It uses a coarse-grain data-flow programming model successfully
exposed by both GW and COMPSs. CDMI was tested
• The feasibility of using this framework in Monte Carlo
radiotherapy simulations has been proved with a synthetic
treatment verification
• Proof-of-concept of using on-demand remote computing
capacity to bring innovative services to hospitals with
radiotherapy facilities through Internet
10. Future Plans
• Integrate the cloud execution within the eIMRT
platform, both GW based and COMPSs
• Use the Accounting module in order to analyse the
business model
• Execute the treatment optimization in the Cloud
11. Additional information
• References
– J. Pena, D. M. González-Castaño, F. Gómez, A. Gago-Arias, F. J.
González-Castaño, D. Rodríguez-Silva, A. Gómez, C. Mouriño, M.
Pombar, and M. Sánchez. eIMRT: a web platform for the verification
and optimisation of radiation treatment plans. In Journal of Applied
Clinical Medical Physics , volume 10, 2009.
– A. Gómez, J.C. Mouriño, L.M. Carril, Z. Martín, D. Lezzi, R. Rafanell,
and R.M Badía. Execution of Monte Carlo Treatment Verification on
Cloud using COMPSs Platform. Proceedings of the 3rd European
Workshop on Monte Carlo Treatment Planning (MCTP’12). pp. 186-
189, 2012.
• URL for the eIMRT project
– http://eimrt.cesga.es
12. Contact
Carlos Mouriño
Centro de Supercomputación de Galicia
Av. De Vigo s/n (Campus Vida),
Santiago de Compostela
15705 A Coruña, Spain
Tel: +34-981569810
Fax. +34-981594616
E-mail: jmourino@cesga.es