Graphics Processing Unit-Based Bioheat Simulation to Facilitate Rapid Decision Making Associated with Cryosurgery Training.

This study focuses on the implementation of an efficient numerical technique for cryosurgery simulations on a graphics processing unit as an alternative means to accelerate runtime. This study is part of an ongoing effort to develop computerized training tools for cryosurgery, with prostate cryosurgery as a developmental model. The ability to perform rapid simulations of various test cases is critical to facilitate sound decision making associated with medical training. Consistent with clinical practice, the training tool aims at correlating the frozen region contour and the corresponding temperature field with the target region shape. The current study focuses on the feasibility of graphics processing unit-based computation using C++ accelerated massive parallelism, as one possible implementation. Benchmark results on a variety of computation platforms display between 3-fold acceleration (laptop) and 13-fold acceleration (gaming computer) of cryosurgery simulation, in comparison with the more common implementation on a multicore central processing unit. While the general concept of graphics processing unit-based simulations is not new, its application to phase-change problems, combined with the unique requirements for cryosurgery optimization, represents the core contribution of the current study.