eIMRT: a web platform for the verification and optimization of radiation treatment plans.

The eIMRT platform is a remote distributed computing tool that provides users with Internet access to three different services: Monte Carlo optimization of treatment plans, CRT & IMRT treatment optimization, and a database of relevant radiation treatments/clinical cases. These services are accessible through a user-friendly and platform independent web page. Its flexible and scalable design focuses on providing the final users with services rather than a collection of software pieces. All input and output data (CT, contours, treatment plans and dose distributions) are handled using the DICOM format. The design, implementation, and support of the verification and optimization algorithms are hidden to the user. This allows a unified, robust handling of the software and hardware that enables these computation-intensive services. The eIMRT platform is currently hosted by the Galician Supercomputing Center (CESGA) and may be accessible upon request (there is a demo version at http://eimrt.cesga.es:8080/eIMRT2/demo; request access in http://eimrt.cesga.es/signup.html). This paper describes all aspects of the eIMRT algorithms in depth, its user interface, and its services. Due to the flexible design of the platform, it has numerous applications including the intercenter comparison of treatment planning, the quality assurance of radiation treatments, the design and implementation of new approaches to certain types of treatments, and the sharing of information on radiation treatment techniques. In addition, the web platform and software tools developed for treatment verification and optimization have a modular design that allows the user to extend them with new algorithms. This software is not a commercial product. It is the result of the collaborative effort of different public research institutions and is planned to be distributed as an open source project. In this way, it will be available to any user; new releases will be generated with the new implemented codes or upgrades.

Monte Carlo verification of IMRT treatment plans on grid.

The eIMRT project is producing new remote computational tools for helping radiotherapists to plan and deliver treatments. The first available tool will be the IMRT treatment verification using Monte Carlo, which is a computational expensive problem that can be executed remotely on a GRID. In this paper, the current implementation of this process using GRID and SOA technologies is presented, describing the remote execution environment and the client.

Remote radiotherapy planning: the eIMRT project.

In this paper, we present the eIMRT project which is currently carried out by diverse institutions in Galicia (Spain) and the USA. The eIMRT project will offer radiotherapists a set of algorithms to optimize and validate radiotherapy treatments, both CRT- and IMRT-based, hiding the complexity of the computer infrastructure needed to solve the problem using GRID technologies. The new platform is designed to be independent from the medical accelerator models, scalable and open. Having a web portal as client, it is designed in three layers using web services, which will allow users to access the platform directly from any front-end and client. It has three main components, namely remote characterization of linear accelerators for Monte Carlo and convolution/superposition (C/S) dose-calculation techniques, remote Grid-enabled radiotherapy treatment planning optimization and verification and data depository.