New Technology Developed to Speed Brain Wave Analysis

A new project to speed and improve the diagnosis of a variety of brain conditions using Grid shared-computing resources, Linux, and supercomputer technology has been announced by the University of Oregon and its partners, IBM and Electrical Geodesics, Incorporated (EGI).

The Integrated Cognitive Neuroscience, Informatics, and Computation (ICONIC) Grid is the result of a $1,000,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to build an advanced Grid computing infrastructure to apply high-performance computing to diagnosis and treatment brain-related conditions. The platform represents a research platform that targets technology transfer to medical applications from the outset.

The ICONIC Grid harnesses the collective processing power of the school’s computing systems to allow more rapid diagnosis of brain conditions such as Epilepsy, strokes, and depression. The Grid offers university researchers the ability to gain better control over the large volume of data generated during its diagnostic imaging work, and enables the system to better respond to temporary spikes in demand for computing horsepower.

EGI, a private medical device and imaging provider, is working with the University of Oregon to further study the commercial possibilities for using Grid and Linux-based systems to speed and improve brain wave monitoring at hospitals and research centers.

“Grid computing technology from IBM will play an important role in helping EGI provide doctors and researchers with on demand access to critical patient data,” said Dr. Donald Tucker, CEO, Electrical Geodesics, Inc. “We believe Grid computing not only brings performance capacity, but allows the patient security and accountability required for critical medical applications.”

The university completed the ICONIC Grid installation earlier this year, which features IBM eServer p690, eServer p655 compute servers running Linux, WebSphere Application Server and the open source Globus Toolkit.

“With the multiple architectures provided by IBM’s products, we can conduct research on ways of optimizing the medical informatics demands for high performance computing,” Neuroinformatics Center Director Dr. Allen Malony explained. “At the same time, we can evaluate all of these architectures running the Linux operating system, simplifying our system administration and improving our reliability.”

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