PLACIS

PLAteforme de Calcul Intensif et de Stockage

Most of the methodological developments in the fields of medical information processing require validation tests based mainly on simulated data or databases integrating prior knowledge. The creation of these simulated databases and the associated validation studies are slow processes requiring very long calculation times. In order to facilitate the validation work required for the various axes of the laboratory, an intensive computing and simulation platform has been set up. This platform consists of two components, hardware and software.

The hardware component is a hybrid cluster with 800 CPU cores and 72 GPUs dedicated to calculations, and storage capacity is about 200TB useful.

The software component mainly concerns Monte Carlo (MC) methods, which have become essential for many medical applications, particularly in imaging and radiotherapy. In particular, our team participates in the development and validation of a set of software around simulation MC (www.opengatecollaboration.org) and reconstruction.

Another project concerns the design of a modeling software allowing the combination of tissue computer models (eg tumors) with patient-specific anthropomorphic models. This project, which represents a transversal research axis between the two INSERM units U1101 and U1078, but in the future also of EA3883 UBO - ENIB (LISyC), should allow PLACIS to become a modeling platform of the Brest Institute of Health Agro Matter (IBSAM). It is important to emphasize that this intensive computing platform set up thanks to the funding obtained within the Canceropole Grand Ouest (CGO) tumor vectoring axis is already recognized as a "technological platform for simulation in imaging and dosimetry" The CGO.

It should be noted that in 2017 the platform received an important update, thanks to the research project "PreClinLab" within the framework of C.P.E.R 2015-2020.