Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linux Cluster Supercomputer Performs Surgery on Dog

Posted by Soulskill on from the hasn't-quite-mastered-fetch-though dept.

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.'"

4 of 68 comments (clear)

  1. The dog died. by cduffy · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...and they bury that very far down in TFA. The question, of course, is whether that was the planned outcome; I'd like to see it answered a little more explicitly.

    If it is the intended outcome... well, so be it. If not, OTOH, that makes me a little less likely to sign up to be an early human test subject. :)

    1. Re:The dog died. by J'ai+Friedpork · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Took this comment seriously, did you?
    2. Re:The dog died. by crackp1pe · · Score: 5, Funny

      Linux killed a dog? It must have been using ReiserFS, I hear it's a killer file system.

  2. Awesome by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For the big dollars that surgeons pull down, they are after all performing mostly rote procedures for the most part. When you can replace a decade of training a person with a simple file copy to load software on to a robot, think of the savings that represents. Health care costs are a big drag on our standard of living in all other areas and it's only getting worse. Not to mention the millions who die around the world because they simply cannot afford the procedures. I'm by no means saying this technology is ready or that I'd be willing to go under the robo-knife at this point, but I'm sure glad they're working on it.