Pushing the limits for medical image reconstruction on recent standard multicore processors

Eitzinger J, Hager G, Hofmann H, Hornegger J, Wellein G (2013)


Publication Type: Journal article, Original article

Publication year: 2013

Journal

Original Authors: Treibig J., Hager G., Hofmann H., Hornegger J., Wellein G.

Publisher: SAGE Publications (UK and US)

Book Volume: 27

Pages Range: 162-177

Journal Issue: 2

DOI: 10.1177/1094342012442424

Abstract

Volume reconstruction by backprojection is the computational bottleneck in many interventional clinical computed tomography (CT) applications. Today vendors in this field replace special purpose hardware accelerators with standard hardware such as multicore chips and GPGPUs. Medical imaging algorithms are on the verge of employing high-performance computing (HPC) technology, and are therefore an interesting new candidate for optimization. This paper presents low-level optimizations for the backprojection algorithm, guided by a thorough performance analysis on four generations of Intel multicore processors (Harpertown, Westmere, Westmere EX, and Sandy Bridge). We choose the RabbitCT benchmark, a standardized testcase well supported in industry, to ensure transparent and comparable results. Our aim is to provide not only the fastest possible implementation but also compare with performance models and hardware counter data in order to fully understand the results. We separate the influence of algorithmic optimizations, parallelization, SIMD vectorization, and microarchitectural issues and pinpoint problems with current SIMD instruction set extensions on standard CPUs (SSE, AVX). The use of assembly language is mandatory for best performance. Finally, we compare our results to the best GPGPU implementations available for this open competition benchmark. © The Author(s) 2012.

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How to cite

APA:

Eitzinger, J., Hager, G., Hofmann, H., Hornegger, J., & Wellein, G. (2013). Pushing the limits for medical image reconstruction on recent standard multicore processors. International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 27(2), 162-177. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1094342012442424

MLA:

Eitzinger, Jan, et al. "Pushing the limits for medical image reconstruction on recent standard multicore processors." International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications 27.2 (2013): 162-177.

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