<title>VISTAnet: radiation therapy treatment planning through rapid dose calculation and interactive 3D volume visualization</title>

Abstract

VISTAnet, an experimental gigabit network test bed, ties together a CRAY Y-MP™, the Pixel-Planes 5 graphics engine, and an SGI™ host machine to create a metacomputer capable of real-time radiation therapy dose calculation and display. We report on the methods used to manipulate and examine the 3D radiation dose distribution, with emphasis on the visualization, which uses a parallel, interactive, multimodal renderer implemented on Pixel-Planes 5. The real-time display is designed to facilitate comprehension of spatial relationships among the geometrically complex anatomy and radiation dose structures that characterize a 3D radiation treatment scenario. The currently ongoing clinical evaluation of VISTAnet has already yielded encouraging results.

Interactive volume visualization on a heterogeneous message-passing multicomputer

“…The example shows that the new approach requires fewer samples than the full subdivision method. A triangular subdivision method [15] has similar economy, but is less well suited to square regions.…”