With the introduction of the Distributed Calculation Framework (DCF) in Eclipse 8.1, the Treatment Planning System is no longer confined to a conventional Treatment Planning Workstation. The full ARIA network is now available for parallelized dose calculation. The network is the computer. Some notes about the inplementation at KFJ can be found in the ARIA log.

There exists a web platform on the ARIA database server (port 57580) which gives realtime information about the DCF.

The System status summary lists the numbers of Agents on the network that are offering their services to potential clients, the number of clients being served and the number of calls in progress. Also in the System menu are the Distributor details. The distributor resides on the ARIA server.

The Agents menu has the Agent status overview with more detailed information about the names of the machines offering services (8) and the number of services (20). In this screenshot, the 8 agents have nothing to do. Here, a calculation is running. The client s10iro40 is served by three agents for an electron field (parallelization factor 3). Since the screenshot was taken on the machine s10iro-m10, this machine is printed in italic.

The current services include the Anisotropic Analytical Algorithm (AAA) for photon dose calculation, the Dose Volume Optimizer (DVO) for photon IMRT, the new Electron Monte Carlo (EMC) and the old Generalized Gaussian Pencil Beam (GGPB) for electron dose calculation, the Pencil Beam Convolution (PBC, the working horse of photon dose calculation), the Proton Dose Calculation (PCS), and the Portal Dose Image Prediction (PDIP) for Portal Dosimetry.

The Agent system overview lists the agent's OS, processor speed, memory and link speed.

The Calls menu offers different possibilities. If "Calls in progress" is chosen (not shown here), an "Auto Refresh" trigger can be activated to get real-time display of calculations in progress without the need to reload the page manually.

The system does not save the logged data to files. Logging data is lost when the server is rebooted. Our Eclipse 8.1 was installed on the weekend of June 22/23.

The following animation shows the calculation speed of a typical 5 field IMRT prostate plan, calculated with the AAA (2.5mm grid) and the DCF. Each field is calculated on a different machine. Volume calculation took 40 seconds.
The Firefox browser window shows the web platform on the ARIA database server (port 57580)with the "Calls in progress" page.