GENIUS Network
From RealityGrid
[edit] GENIUS Lightpath network
Various Lightpath links will be provisioned for HemeLB cross-site runs along with providing a means for high-bandwidth low-latency visualisation and steering. The figure below outlines the GENIUS Lightpath links (in red) we are establishing.
There is currently a 300Mb/s connection from UCL to the TeraGrid, which will be upgraded to 1Gb/s. Instead of two seperate links to TeraGrid and LONI from UCL, we are planning to have a single Lightpath from UCL to Chicago via Starlight. From there we can connect to the TeraGrid, along with a connection to the EnLIGHTened testbed, and therefore the LONI resources.
The link between the two NGS2 nodes is intended for cross-site HemeLB runs, with the link back to UCL/NH used for steering and real-time visualisation.
Lightpath Status
The following table describs the status of the various Lightpaths (under construction).
| Lightpath Link | Endpoints | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|
| UCL - NGS2/Manchester | UCL | NGS2/Manchester | Application submitted to JANET |
| NGS2/Manchester - NGS2/Oxford | NGS2/Manchester | NGS2/Oxford | Application submitted to JANET |
| UCL - HPCx | UCL | HPCx | Application submitted to JANET (300Mb/s connection already in place) |
| UCL - TeraGrid | UCL | TeraGrid | To be submitted shortly (300Mb/s connection already in place) |
| UCL - LONI | UCL | LONI | To be submitted shortly |
Optical Network Subnets
The following table describes the subnets used by the various networks.
| Testbed | Subnet | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| NGS2 | ? | Does this include UCL? |
| LONI | 172.30.0.0/16 | (Also use, for Japan - 172.18.0.0/16) |
| TeraGrid | ? | Unknown |
[edit] GENIUS Workflow
A high-level overview of GENIUS work-flow would involve the following steps.
1. Acquisition of cerebral MRI data from a patient at the NHNN.
2. Anonymisation of MRI data and placement on a data server.
3. Transfer of MRI data from NHNN to local (or remote) HPC facilities.
4. Extraction of cerebral-vascular structure from MRI data and construction of LB boundary conditions.
5. HemeLB bloodflow simulation is run on a HPC resource, where the rendering of the high-resolution dataset is rendered as this proceeds. A steering mechanism allows the clinician, at a remote location, to interact with the simulation (viewpoint parameters, model parameters, boundary conditions, etc), giving real-time feedback.
Steps 3 and 5 require the availability of a high-speed network between NHNN and the UCL HPC cluster, for example.
Data Acquisition
MRI datasets are currently acquired at a raw resolution of 512x512, with 100 slices. Each pixel is stored as a 16 bit value, resulting in a dataset size of 50MB. New data available towards the end of 2007 using new MRI hardware (?) will consist of a 1024^3 raw voxel volume, resulting in dataset sizes of 2GB. A number of development are taking place at NHNN which...
- Two new angiography suites (capable of 3D rotational angiography, in which a volumetric image is created by obtaining many 2D projections of the brain during rapid injection of intra-arterial contrast into the carotid arteries).
- A new 64 slice CT-scanner capable of rapid acquisition of volumetric data during intravenous injection of contrast into a peripheral vein.
- Two new MRI scanners capable of generation of MRA (magnetic resonance angiography) images, also able to be processed volumetrically.
... to be completed.
Remote Visualisation and Steering
To be added.
