Speaker
Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.
The size of USOncology clinics (up to 150 modern CPUs per
physical location) offers
an ideal match for this type of grid deployment. Physical
security and excellent
network connectivity circumvent certain known issues that prevent
grid proliferation
at 1994-95 web-server levels. Hardware age and standardization
adds immensely in
"silent worker CPU" deployment in the organization. We have also
experience WAN-like
deployment in metropolitan areas with very encouraging scaling
results.
Still user credentialing, uniform level of authorization and
similar administrative
"trivia" continue to be issues, that we by-pass by silent
installation. The cardinal
issues of trust and security-especially when actual patient
medical records are
involved- are dealt at this stage by using the actual physical
security of our clinics.
Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications
Grid-like computational techniques have been previously reported
in radiotherapy
treatment planning either to speed-up traditional calculations or
offer realistic
access to monte-carlo simulations. In this work we use
commercially available
treatment planning algorithms to hunt for an efficient frontier
in parameter space.
For a 3-dim space we generate a 3, 4 or 5 lattice, with each
point requiring between
15-20 min of single dedicated CPU time. The resulting plans (64,
125 or 216) are
graded by seasoned practitioners and an efficient island is build
in phase space. The
computational load is spread over about 100 CPUs, physically
located in one of our
clinics. One or two radiotherapy cases can be completed during
every workday, more
during weekends. Such efficiency islands can provide starting
points for additional
computational efforts or offer a guide to the best available
available treatment
strategies.
Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).
Modern radiotherapy delivers ionizing radiation energy to a
tissue volume with the
intent to disrupt cell proliferation, while avoiding as much as
possible nearby
non-involved tissues. A priori, it is not obvious the optimal
radiotherapy treatment
plan for a specific patient. We report on our experience of
generating large number
of competing treatment plans which are graded by humans in an
attempt to construct an
"efficient frontier island" in the relevant parameter phase space.
With a forward look to future evolution, discuss the issues you have encountered (or that you expect) in using the EGEE infrastructure. Wherever possible, point out the experience limitations (both in terms of existing services or missing functionality)
The true potential of this work will be harvested from massive
deployment of
time-shifted grids, that is by definition, geographically
separated nodes on a global
scale, making the need for trusted and secure yet unobtrusive
administration even
more pressing. This appears to be consistently the major
objection from the
radiotherapy medical community in the limited feedback this work
has elicited at this
early stage.
