Linux Cluster Supercomputer Performs Surgery on Dog

An anonymous reader writes "In April, the Lonestar supercomputer, a Dell Linux Cluster with 5,840 processors at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin, performed laser surgery on a dog in Houston without the intervention of a surgeon. The article describes the process: 'The treatment itself is broken into four stages: 1) Lonestar instructs the laser to heat the domain with a non-damaging calibration pulse; 2) the thermal MRI acquires baseline images of the heating and cooling of the patient's tissue for model calibration; 3) Lonestar inputs this patient-specific information and recomputes the optimal power profile for the rest of the treatments; and 4) surgery begins, with remote visualizations and evolving predictions continuing throughout the procedure.'"

Comments

Re:The dog died.

[J'ai Friedpork]

Second. I for one would like to know whether the dog died because of the treatment, in spite of it, or because they had to do an autopsy. Probably the latter, but the fact that they didn't specify it is a little worrying.

Re:Awesome

[Xtravar]

We could get the savings now, without machines, if we lowered the bar to doing certain doctor-only actions and stopped artificially limiting the amount of doctors in the market.

In some cases, they already are by allowing doctor's assistants and nurses' assistants the same powers. But I won't really consider it a success until I can go down the street and have eye surgery in Boris's basement, right next to where he makes the bootleg vodka.

Autodoc?

[AmiMoJo]

This sounds like one of the first steps in creating an autodoc from Larry Niven's books. Basically a box (coffin) you put someone in, close the lid and wait for it to fix them. It contains full life support, can perform surgery and produce (cloning?) it's own replacement parts.

Of more immediate use, this sort of thing could be very useful for situations where surgeons are not available. Ships at sea, trips to Mars, NHS hospitals with long waiting lists...