GPU-based 3D-FDTD computation for electromagnetic field dosimetry

Numerical dosimetry with the computational human model using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method has recently been used for a safety assessment of electromagnetic field applications. However, the FDTD calculation runs very slowly and requires a large amount of computational memory. We focus, therefore, on general purpose programming on the graphics processing unit (GPGPU). We implemented the three-dimensional (3D) FDTD method on GPUs using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). In this study, we used the NVIDIA Tesla C2070 as a GPGPU board and tested the performance of FDTD computation on GPUs. The results indicated that while the single GPU/CPU speed ratio varies depending on the calculation domain, 3D-FDTD computation using a GPU requires significantly less run time than that using a conventional CPU. We confirmed that the FDTD computation on a multi-GPU is much faster than that on a single GPU, and we also found that eight GPUs can compute faster than a vector supercomputer.

[1]  O P Gandhi,et al.  Power deposition in the head and neck of an anatomically based human body model for plane wave exposures. , 1998, Physics in medicine and biology.

[2]  A. Taflove.  The Finite-Difference Time-Domain Method , 1995 .

[3]  A. Ahlbom.  Guidelines for limiting exposure to time-varying electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic fields (up to 300 GHz) , 1998 .

[4]  N. Takada,et al.  High-speed FDTD simulation algorithm for GPU with compute unified device architecture , 2009, 2009 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium.

[5]  Junyi Xia,et al.  High performance computing for deformable image registration: towards a new paradigm in adaptive radiotherapy. , 2008, Medical physics.

[6]  Inanc Senocak,et al.  An MPI-CUDA Implementation for Massively Parallel Incompressible Flow Computations on Multi-GPU Clusters , 2010 .

[7]  P. Dimbylow,et al.  Whole-body-averaged SAR from 50 MHz to 4 GHz in the University of Florida child voxel phantoms , 2007, Physics in medicine and biology.

[8]  A Bel,et al.  Accelerated ray tracing for radiotherapy dose calculations on a GPU. , 2009, Medical physics.

[9]  P. Dimbylow.  Development of the female voxel phantom, NAOMI, and its application to calculations of induced current densities and electric fields from applied low frequency magnetic and electric fields , 2005, Physics in medicine and biology.

[10]  John M. Ziriax,et al.  Parametric dependence of SAR on permittivity values in a man model , 2001, IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng..

[11]  Koichi Ito,et al.  An anatomically realistic whole-body pregnant-woman model and specific absorption rates for pregnant-woman exposure to electromagnetic plane waves from 10 MHz to 2 GHz , 2007, Physics in medicine and biology.

[12]  P. Dimbylow.  FDTD calculations of the whole-body averaged SAR in an anatomically realistic voxel model of the human body from 1 MHz to 1 GHz. , 1997, Physics in medicine and biology.

[13]  Paulius Micikevicius,et al.  3D finite difference computation on GPUs using CUDA , 2009, GPGPU-2.

[14]  P. Dimbylow,et al.  SAR in the mother and foetus for RF plane wave irradiation , 2007, Physics in medicine and biology.

[15]  Soichi Watanabe,et al.  A GPU-based calculation using the three-dimensional FDTD method for electromagnetic field analysis , 2010, 2010 Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology.

[16]  T. Nagaoka,et al.  Development of realistic high-resolution whole-body voxel models of Japanese adult males and females of average height and weight, and application of models to radio-frequency electromagnetic-field dosimetry. , 2004, Physics in medicine and biology.

[17]  Soichi Watanabe,et al.  Proportion-corrected scaled voxel models for Japanese children and their application to the numerical dosimetry of specific absorption rate for frequencies from 30 MHz to 3 GHz. , 2008, Physics in medicine and biology.

[18]  M A Stuchly,et al.  A comparison of 60 Hz uniform magnetic and electric induction in the human body. , 1997, Physics in medicine and biology.