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Access Grid aids SARS patients

During the 2003 Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus outbreak in Taiwan, Argonne's Access Grid technology enabled radiologists from across the country to review patients' X-rays without added risk of infection. Three members of Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division assisted in the fast deployment of the specialized Grid.

SARS GRID — Access Grid technology enabled radiologists across Taiwan to review SARS patients' daily X-rays without risk of infection.

Access Grid technology, conceived and developed at Argonne, connects people across town or around the world to interact and exchange ideas with each other in real time through high-resolution video and voice over the Internet. Each "node" in the grid may be able to display a dozen or more real-time images of other users, documents, Web sites and other useful data.

Normally, laboratory and academic groups use the Access Grid for training and education, conferences and workshops, site visits and formal reviews. It also supports ongoing research and scientific collaboration and is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

The SARS Grid helped prove the technology has a future for medical applications.

"We've long thought this might be the right technology for rural areas, where the residents might not have access to medical specialists," said Experimental Systems Engineer Terry Disz of Argonne's Futures Laboratory in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division. "The deployment of our technology to support this effort was pretty exciting."

SARS infected more than 8,000 people around the world in its 2003 outbreak. The virus causes a high fever and a dry cough, followed by an accumulation of fluid in the lungs that causes difficulty breathing. The mortality rate is less than 5 percent for healthy adults, but it can be as high as 55 percent in the elderly.

As the Taiwan outbreak was beginning to peak in mid-May, with hundreds of people infected, Taiwan's National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) was finishing setting up its Access Grid node. Scientists there realized the Access Grid could be used for medical information management — especially the sharing of high-resolution X-rays of SARS patients. Patients are monitored with daily chest X-rays that reveal the extent of fluid accumulation in the lungs. Each patient's treatment may last a month.

"As you can see, it was one heck of a lot of X-ray data," said Disz. "There weren't enough diagnosticians on the island to keep up with the demand. Understandably, medical personnel in other countries were reluctant to travel to the scene of the outbreak."

Access Grid technology offered a way for radiologists in Taiwan to share X-ray data with diagnosticians at other hospitals without risking the diagnosticians' health.

NCHC employees worked around the clock to set up basic Access Grid nodes at several hospitals and Taiwan's Center of Disease Control. The unprecedented urgency led them to request the help of Argonne computer scientists who helped develop the technology. A late-night conference call was set up: Disz, Tom Uram and Ivan Judson from Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science Division provided NCHC experts with guidance on installing and configuring the latest version of the Access Grid software. Uram stayed in e-mail contact as the project progressed.

"They were able to reach an operational state quickly, which I attribute to improvements in our software and their hard work," Uram said. — Dave Jacqué

For more information, please contact Dave Jacqué (630/252-5582 or info@anl.gov) at Argonne.