Hospital Amiga

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 30

Hospital Amiga

By

NEILL BIRSS

An Amiga 1000 home computer is providing excellent help In cancer treatment at Christchurch Hospital. Mr Bernard Mentink, a research technologist in the Department of Clinical Oncology, is providing on-line graphics that help specialists in planning radiotherapy treatment It is critical for the specialists to know for each patient the volume of sensitive organs such as lungs and the volume of tumours. This allows more precise direction of the radiation.

The information is obtained from the hospital’s two CT (computer tomography) scanners: a GE machine and another built and improved over the years by hospital technicians. The scanners rotate around a patient taking “slice” X-rays which give a picture through the body. The information from the department-built CT’s X-rays goes to a VAX computer for further processing. The GE machine processes its own data. This information helps

doctors to plan radiati n doses. Dr Richa d Tremewen, a clinical pl sicist in the departmei , says human judgment p> soil critical in the drawing up of the treatmei; plan for ft patient Thi Amiga processes datt from both scanners ant returns this for the plot ting out of life-size out lines. I Mr Mentink’s software also creates a colour, cross-section showing the “slice” of the patient The? data from the GE scanned allows higher resolution] graphics than that from the hospital-built machine.

Dr Tremewen says the interactiveness of the Amiga system is valuable. The physician can move quickly from cross-section to cross-section, for ex- . ample. Mr Mentink has built a menu-driven system which makes use of Amiga’s excellent graphics to provide colour cross-sections for the oncology physicians. The main purpose is to give clear body outlines and volumes of tumours and organs.

The .'mouse and the menus make the soteßare k easy to use. The software is still being’ developed; and Mr Mentink hopes to provide three-dimensional imagery to support another form of treatment ' > Mr Mentink uses h standard amiga with two floppy, disk drives. <He hopes to upgrade to an Amiga 2000 and a hard disk. ’.;s.h ;r : The software is written in C, and the extensive library of commands in the Amiga’s 256 K of readi only memory - has been ■ helpful. . I Why an Amiga? One treason is price. The col--1 lour Amiga is a fraction of '..the price of a colour work station of a commercial System. Another is speed. .The four processors in the Amiga make it very fast in colour graphics. A third / reason is the multitasking by the processors and the .'multiple windows. These : allow the user to switch quickly from one screen : to another. ■ ' Work on the project began in January under a grant from the McClelland Trust supporting Mr Mentink’s position.