IBM and University Researchers Collaborate on Cancer Imaging Project
IBM and University Researchers Collaborate on Cancer Imaging Project
January 29, 2008: Big Blue has partnered up with Rutgers and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ) on a major imaging project to advance cancer research.
The new project will be using the World Community Grid (WCG) which is a virtual supercomputer that gains resources by volunteers donating their unused computer time, a similar distributed computing model to the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and the Folding@Home project, though these are focused on a single humanitarian effort whereas the WCG can be used for several at once.
"This is an ambitious initiative that will push the frontiers of medicine and science by modernizing the collection, interpretation and distribution of cancer research," said Jai Menon, vice president, IBM. "A new diagnostic tool with capabilities to analyze diverse types of cancer tissue has the potential to yield breakthrough advances for cancer research worldwide."
The investigation teams at CINJ are also unpacking a set of IBM P6-570’s into a brand new super-computing centre for data-analysis of the research findings. This centre will be linked into the massive distributed computing grid as well as several other major University and research centres.
"World Community Grid enabled us to validate our imaging and pattern recognition algorithms and establish a reference library of expression signatures for more than 100,000 digitally imaged tissue samples.” said David J. Foran, Ph.D., director, CINJ.
The WCG currently has five active campaigns running on its network, with four projects already completed.