NA-MIC/Projects/External Collaboration/W&M CRTC

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Key Investigators

• Nikos Chrisochoides, CRTC (Project lead)
• Andrey Fedorov, CRTC
• Luis Ibanez, Kitware
• Jim Miller, Kitware
• Dan Marcus
• Tina Kapur
• Marcel Prastawa

Objective

The mission of the Center for Real-Time Computing is to promote innovation in time critical applications like medical image analysis for Image Guided Therapy. The application of our focus is non-rigid image registration (NRR) for image-guided neurosurgery. The objective is to improve the performance, accuracy and usability of the existing method. There are two sub-projects we plan to explore.

1. Distributed parametric search for optimum parameter setting during NRR. This project includes three components: 1) development/evaluation of tools and methods for automated registration validation; 2) collection of ground truth data sets; 3) development of the high performance computing infrastructure.

2. Tetrahedral mesh generation for intra-cranial cavity discretization used in physics-based NRR.

Approach, Plan

1. Distributed parametric search:

• need help with automated validation approaches, neurosurgery datasets

• evaluate the infrastructure options: GWE/GSlicer3? web portal? TeraGrid?

• are there other needs for this kind of large-scale computing?

2. Tetrahedral mesh generation:

• meshing TCON Jun 19: no volume mesh generation discussed. What is (is there?) the need for tetrahedral mesh generation from NA-MIC projects?

• status of unstructured grid visualization in Slicer3

• meshing as a plugin in Slicer3

Progress

1. Distributed parameter search for NRR:

• missing features in GWE: support for MPI process execution and flow (dependencies) control

• work in progress: scripts for remote submission and execution on TeraGrid (execution module integration of the front end for registration with Slicer complete earlier)

• new datasets for registration evaluation: MRT data from XNAT, tumor growth for NRR validation (Utah)

2. (Tetrahedral) mesh generation:

• very limited open source support, limited mesh generation functionality in ITK/VTK

• identified a group of applications that require meshing, continue discussion

• Slicer3 meshing integration: vtkUnstructuredGrid support almost ready in Slicer

• learned hands-on how to add an execution module to Slicer

Events

• attended ITK, Non-rigid registration, GWE, XNAT, VV-link breakout sessions

Funding

This work is supported in part by NSF grant CSI-719929 and by John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

References

• CRTC web site: