Laboratory of Medical Imaging High Performance Computing and Informatics

Description

Optical Imaging Tomography and Applications (OITA)
Bo Qiang, MS., Dr. Jun Ni, Ph.D., Dr. Laurie Fajardo, M.D.
Department of Radiology, College of Medicine, University of Iowa, USA

Parallel implementations of optical photon transports in biomedicine systems. The project includes the studies of the Monte Carlo algorithm and implementations of optical transport in biological tissues, diffusion for optical tomography.

Light in certain wavelength ranges can penetrate deep into biological tissues. A near-Infrared (NIR) light with a wavelength within a range from 600 nm to 1000 nm can go through human epidermis layers and interact with organs such as blood vessels, fat cells, muscles and neurons. This phenomenon inspires the development of a Diffuse Optical Tomography (DOT)-based, non-invasive diagnostic measurement. Combined with CT and/or MRI, DOT provides a higher selectivity and sensitivity for early-stage breast cancer detection than the mammogram. Its advantages and high clinical demands encourage us to develop an efficient simulation of multi-photon migration. Monte Carlo simulation, as one of promising numerical methods, tracks photons’ movements within heterogeneous tissues through a stochastic description. However, it requires a much computing time.

The parallel Monte Carlo simulation is developed and implemented using a task-decomposition algorithm. The movement of each single photon inside a biological tissue follows a random journey. This can be simulated on a single computing process. Using a multi-processor cluster, the whole multi-photons can be simulated in parallel.

Computational scalability in terms of speedup, defined as the ratio of sequential computation time of parallel computation time, and computational time vs. number of photons.

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Description