PMID- 23892709
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20140220
LR  - 20130806
IS  - 1361-6560 (Electronic)
IS  - 0031-9155 (Linking)
VI  - 58
IP  - 16
DP  - 2013 Aug 21
TI  - Geant4-based Monte Carlo simulations on GPU for medical applications.
PG  - 5593-611
LID - 10.1088/0031-9155/58/16/5593 [doi]
AB  - Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) plays a key role in medical applications, especially 
      for emission tomography and radiotherapy. However MCS is also associated with 
      long calculation times that prevent its use in routine clinical practice. 
      Recently, graphics processing units (GPU) became in many domains a low cost 
      alternative for the acquisition of high computational power. The objective of 
      this work was to develop an efficient framework for the implementation of MCS on 
      GPU architectures. Geant4 was chosen as the MCS engine given the large variety of 
      physics processes available for targeting different medical imaging and 
      radiotherapy applications. In addition, Geant4 is the MCS engine behind GATE 
      which is actually the most popular medical applications' simulation platform. We 
      propose the definition of a global strategy and associated structures for such a 
      GPU based simulation implementation. Different photon and electron physics 
      effects are resolved on the fly directly on GPU without any approximations with 
      respect to Geant4. Validations have shown equivalence in the underlying photon 
      and electron physics processes between the Geant4 and the GPU codes with a 
      speedup factor of 80-90. More clinically realistic simulations in emission and 
      transmission imaging led to acceleration factors of 400-800 respectively compared 
      to corresponding GATE simulations.
FAU - Bert, Julien
AU  - Bert J
AD  - LaTIM, UMR 1101 INSERM, CHRU Brest, Brest, France. julien.bert@univ-brest.fr
FAU - Perez-Ponce, Hector
AU  - Perez-Ponce H
FAU - El Bitar, Ziad
AU  - El Bitar Z
FAU - Jan, Sebastien
AU  - Jan S
FAU - Boursier, Yannick
AU  - Boursier Y
FAU - Vintache, Damien
AU  - Vintache D
FAU - Bonissent, Alain
AU  - Bonissent A
FAU - Morel, Christian
AU  - Morel C
FAU - Brasse, David
AU  - Brasse D
FAU - Visvikis, Dimitris
AU  - Visvikis D
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
DEP - 20130729
PL  - England
TA  - Phys Med Biol
JT  - Physics in medicine and biology
JID - 0401220
SB  - IM
MH  - *Computer Graphics
MH  - *Diagnostic Imaging
MH  - Electrons
MH  - *Monte Carlo Method
MH  - Photons
MH  - *Radiotherapy
MH  - Scattering, Radiation
MH  - Tomography
EDAT- 2013/07/31 06:00
MHDA- 2014/02/22 06:00
CRDT- 2013/07/30 06:00
PHST- 2013/07/30 06:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2013/07/31 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2014/02/22 06:00 [medline]
AID - 10.1088/0031-9155/58/16/5593 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Phys Med Biol. 2013 Aug 21;58(16):5593-611. doi: 10.1088/0031-9155/58/16/5593. 
      Epub 2013 Jul 29.