SP-ChainMail: a GPU-based sparse parallel ChainMail algorithm for deforming medical volumes

ChainMail algorithm is a physically based deformation algorithm that has been successfully used in virtual surgery simulators, where time is a critical factor. In this paper, we present a parallel algorithm, based on ChainMail, and its efficient implementation that reduces the time required to compute deformations over large medical 3D datasets by means of modern GPU capabilities. We also present a 3D blocking scheme that reduces the amount of unnecessary processing threads. For this purpose, this paper describes a new parallel boolean reduction scheme, used to efficiently decide which blocks are computed. Finally, through an extensive analysis, we show the performance improvement achieved by our implementation of the proposed algorithm and the use of the proposed blocking scheme, due to the high spatial and temporal locality of our approach.