A Grid service for the interactive use of a parallel non-rigid registration algorithm of medical images.

OBJECTIVE The goal of this work is to improve the usability of a non-rigid registration software for medical images. METHOD We have built a registration grid service in order to use the interactivity of a visualization workstation and the computing power of a cluster. On the user side, the system is composed of a graphical interface that interacts in a complex and fluid manner with the registration software running on a remote cluster. CONCLUSION Although the transmission of images back and forth between the computer running the user interface and the cluster running the registration service adds to the total registration time, it provides a user-friendly way of using the registration software without heavy infrastructure investments in hospitals. The system exhibits good performances even if the user is connected to the grid service through a low throughput network such as a wireless network interface or ADSL.