Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Radiation: Applications

Radiation: Applications

The average temperature of Earth is the subject of much current discussion. Earth is in radiative contact with both the Sun and dark space; it receives almost all its energy from the radiation of the Sun and reflects some of it into outer space. Dark space is very cold, about 3 K, so Earth radiates energy into it. For instance, heat transfer occurs from soil and grasses, the rate of which can be so rapid that frost can occur on clear summer evenings, even in warm latitudes.
The average...

Radiation Pressure: Problem Solving

Radiation Pressure: Problem Solving

The radiation pressure applied by an electromagnetic wave on a perfectly absorbing surface equals the energy density of the wave. The wave's momentum also gets transferred to the surface when an electromagnetic wave is entirely absorbed by it. The rate at which momentum is transmitted to an absorbing surface perpendicular to the propagation direction equals the force on the surface.
The average value of the rate of momentum transfer divided by the absorbing area represents the average force per...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Successful palliative hypofractionated radiotherapy with superficial hyperthermia for heavily pretreated cutaneous breast cancer lesions.

Strahlentherapie und Onkologie : Organ der Deutschen Rontgengesellschaft ... [et al]·2026

Same author

Noninvasive Mechanical Ventilation Reduces Cardiorespiratory Motion and Increases Heart-Stomach Distance for Stereotactic Arrhythmia Radiation Therapy: A Healthy Volunteer Study.

Practical radiation oncology·2026

Same author

Capacitive heating devices for therapeutic hyperthermia: a review of essential physical characteristics and challenges.

Strahlentherapie und Onkologie : Organ der Deutschen Rontgengesellschaft ... [et al]·2026

Same author

Reduction of bowel loop motion during radiotherapy for gynaecological cancer assessed by 3D cine-MRI.

Clinical and translational radiation oncology·2025

Same author

Presentation and characterisation of the ALBA micro8 system for targeted hyperthermia in small animal research.

Scientific reports·2025

Same author

Predicted SAR/temperature changes induced by phase-amplitude steering are minimally affected by uncertainties in tissue properties: a basis for robust on-line adaptive hyperthermia treatment planning.

International journal of hyperthermia : the official journal of European Society for Hyperthermic Oncology, North American Hyperthermia Group·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Positron Emission Tomography-based Dose Painting Radiation Therapy in a Glioblastoma Rat Model using the Small Animal Radiation Research Platform

Positron Emission Tomography-based Dose Painting Radiation Therapy in a Glioblastoma Rat Model using the Small Animal Radiation Research Platform

Published on: March 24, 2022

Accelerated ray tracing for radiotherapy dose calculations on a GPU.

M de Greef¹, J Crezee, J C van Eijk

¹Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 9, 1105 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands. m.degreef@amc.uva.nl

Medical Physics

|October 9, 2009

Summary

This study demonstrates that using a graphical processing unit (GPU) significantly accelerates ray tracing for dose calculations in radiotherapy planning. The GPU-enhanced algorithm achieves faster and more accurate results, enabling near real-time calculations.

More Related Videos

Radiation Planning Assistant - A Web-based Tool to Support High-quality Radiotherapy in Clinics with Limited Resources

Radiation Planning Assistant - A Web-based Tool to Support High-quality Radiotherapy in Clinics with Limited Resources

Published on: October 6, 2023

Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies

Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies

Published on: February 6, 2019

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Positron Emission Tomography-based Dose Painting Radiation Therapy in a Glioblastoma Rat Model using the Small Animal Radiation Research Platform

Positron Emission Tomography-based Dose Painting Radiation Therapy in a Glioblastoma Rat Model using the Small Animal Radiation Research Platform

Published on: March 24, 2022

Radiation Planning Assistant - A Web-based Tool to Support High-quality Radiotherapy in Clinics with Limited Resources

Radiation Planning Assistant - A Web-based Tool to Support High-quality Radiotherapy in Clinics with Limited Resources

Published on: October 6, 2023

Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies

Proton Therapy Delivery and Its Clinical Application in Select Solid Tumor Malignancies

Published on: February 6, 2019

Area of Science:

Medical Physics
Computational Science
Radiotherapy Technology

Background:

Modern graphics processing units (GPUs) offer substantial computational power for accelerating complex calculations.
Ray tracing is a computationally intensive algorithm used in radiotherapy for dose calculations.
Existing algorithms like PLATO's may have limitations in speed and accuracy due to discretization errors.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the potential speedup of PLATO's ray tracing algorithm for dose calculations using a GPU.
To compare the accuracy and speed of a GPU-implemented ray tracing algorithm against a multithreaded version.

Main Methods:

Implemented a GPU version of the ray tracing algorithm using NVIDIA's CUDA.
Compared the GPU algorithm's accuracy and speed against a multithreaded PLATO algorithm.
Evaluated performance on phantom and clinical radiotherapy planning CT datasets (pelvic, head-and-neck) with varying source positions.

Main Results:

The GPU algorithm demonstrated higher accuracy by eliminating discretization errors from look-up tables.
Ray tracing speedups ranged from 2.1-10.1x, and dose calculation speedups ranged from 1.5-6.2x.
Speedup was geometry-dependent, influenced by the proportion of air within patient datasets.

Conclusions:

GPU acceleration enables accurate and significantly faster ray tracing for dose calculations.
Average acceleration factor of 6x was observed, with single-beam dose calculations completed in under a second.
Findings support near real-time dose calculations for conventional planning and treatment optimization.