This breakthrough multi-core architecture and ultra high-speed communications capabilities deliver vastly improved, real-time response, much faster compared to the performance of the latest PC processors. Applications may range from a next generation of game systems with dramatically enhanced realism, to systems that form the hub for digital media and streaming content in the home, to systems used to develop and distribute digital content, to systems to accelerate visualization and supercomputing applications.

This project focuses on studying the applicability and benefits offered by System z / Cell BE in the domain of hyperthermia cancer treatment planning in clinical departments. In hyperthermia an array of antennas is used to focus electromagnetic energy into the tumor. The resulting heat increase results in preferential tumor cell killing. To reduce the exposure of healthy tissue and get the energy into the tumor the optimal antenna steering has to be determined for each individual patient. This requires extensive electromagnetic field and thermal simulations as well as nonlinear optimization. To achieve the required high resolution (locally sub-millimeter, about 20 millions voxels) treatment planning in acceptable time this project will:

• Develop versatile, state-of-the-art EM field (nonuniform meshes, conformal subcell method) and thermal simulation (considering the impact of individual blood vessels, the nonlinear temperature dependence of tissue parameters such as perfusion, metabolic processes) software that runs on multiple Cell / sytem z processors.
• Develop interior point PDE-constrained optimization techniques to solve combined thermal simulation / nonlinear optimization problems.