title: Accelerating mesh-based Monte Carlo method on modern CPU architectures.
abstract: In this report, we discuss the use of contemporary ray-tracing techniques to accelerate 3D mesh-based Monte Carlo photon transport simulations. Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) based computation and branch-less design are exploited to accelerate ray-tetrahedron intersection tests and yield a 2-fold speed-up for ray-tracing calculations on a multi-core CPU. As part of this work, we have also studied SIMD-accelerated random number generators and math functions. The combination of these techniques achieved an overall improvement of 22% in simulation speed as compared to using a non-SIMD implementation. We applied this new method to analyze a complex numerical phantom and both the phantom data and the improved code are available as open-source software at http://mcx.sourceforge.net/mmc/.
authors.affiliation: Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA 02129  USA.
authors.forename: Qianqian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: David R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Kaeli