Authors:
Hiroshi Noborio
1
;
Takahiro Kunii
2
and
Kiminori Mizushino
3
Affiliations:
1
Osaka Electro-Commun. Univ., Japan
;
2
Kashina System Co., Japan
;
3
Embedded Wings Co., Japan
Keyword(s):
Parallel Processing, GPGPU, Z-Buffering, STL, DICOM, CT/MRI, CUSA.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Agents
;
Algorithms and Software Tools
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
Bioinformatics
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Computational Intelligence
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Methodologies and Technologies
;
Operational Research
;
Simulation
;
Soft Computing
Abstract:
In this study, we have designed a GPGPU (General-Purpose Graphics Processing Unit)-based algorithm for
determining the minimum distance from the tip of a CUSA (Cavitron Ultrasonic Surgical Aspirator) scalpel
to the closest point around three types of blood vessel STLs (STereo-Lithographies). The algorithm consists
of the following two functions: First, we use z-buffering (depth buffering) as the classic matured function of
the GPU in order to effectively obtain depths corresponding to image pixels. Second, we use multiple cores
of the GPU for parallel processing so as to calculate the minimum Euclidean distance from the scalpel tip to
the closest z-values of the depths. Therefore, the complexity of the GPU-based algorithm does not depend on
the shape complexity (e.g., patch, edge, and vertex numbers) of the blood vessels.