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Monte Carlo simulation of X-ray Transport in a GPU with CUDA (MC-CPU)

MC-CPU logo.

MC-GPU is a GPU-accelerated x-ray transport simulation code that can generate clinically-realistic radiographic projection images and computed tomography (CT) scans of the human anatomy.

MC-GPU implements a massively multi-threaded Monte Carlo simulation algorithm for the transport of x rays in a voxelized geometry and uses the x-ray interaction models and cross sections from PENELOPE 2006. The code can handle realistic human anatomy phantoms, for example the freely available models from the Virtual Family. Electron transport is not implemented. The code has been developed using the CUDA programming model and the simulation can be executed in parallel in state-of-the-art GPUs from NVIDIA Corporation (Santa Clara, CA, USA). An MPI library is used to address multiple GPUs in parallel during the CT simulations. In typical diagnostic imaging simulations, a 15 to 30-fold speed up is obtained using a GPU compared to a CPU execution.

The website from which the source code, executables and user guide may be obtained (without charge) is http://code.google.com/p/mcgpu/


Disclaimer: This software and documentation (the "Software") were developed for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through research fellowships from the Federal Government. Pursuant to Title 17, Section 105 of the United States Code, this work is not subject to copyright protection and is in the public domain. Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of the Software, to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, or sell copies of the Software or derivatives, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so. FDA assumes no responsibility whatsoever for use by other parties of the Software, its source code, documentation or compiled executables, and makes no guarantees, expressed or implied, about its quality, reliability, or any other characteristic. Further, use of this code in no way implies endorsement by the FDA or confers any advantage in regulatory decisions. Although this software can be redistributed and/or modified freely, we ask that any derivative works bear some notice that they are derived from it, and any modified versions bear some notice that they have been modified.

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