Monte Carlo eXtreme, or MCX, is a fast Monte Carlo simulation software for photon transport in 3D heterogeneous media. It uses Graphics Processing Units (GPU) based massively parallel computing techniques and is hundreds times faster compared to traditional single-threaded CPU-based simulations.
MCX is designed for generality, high computational efficiency, and excellent portability. It contains 5 variant forms which are compiled with different feature sets. The software can be compiled on various platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS, and can be used with almost all generations of CUDA-capable devices (8800GT to Fermi).
MCX v0.7.9 is a beta release to the next milestone, code named "Charm Quarks". It contains all the bug fixes and features included in the stable release v0.5.3. In addition, a key new feature added in 0.7.9 is the support of JSON-based 3D shape files and run-time shape rasterization. This new feature frees users from making a binary volume file before running the simulation. A JSON shape file is easy to understand, compact in size, and supports various 3D shape primitives such as layered media, spheres and cylinders.
Compared to Black Hole update 2 released in Sep. 2011, version 0.7.9 includes the following changes:
Sample JSON shape files and benchmarks are provided under the example/shapetest folder.
Pre-compiled MCX were provided for Windows (32/64bit), Linux (32/64bit) and Mac OS (32bit). In the case of MCXLAB, mex files for both Matlab and Octave on these platforms are provided. All binaries were tested on a Fermi GPU (GTX 590).
The detailed change logs can be found in the ChangeLog and SVN commit history pages.
If you choose to use JSON input and shape files, you can use the JSONlab toolbox to direct load/save these JSON input files in MATLAB or Octave. JSONlab was written by the same author as MCX.
To install MCX v0.7.9, you need
To use MCXLAB v0.7.9 in MATLAB, you must have a MATLAB pre-installed.
To use MCXLAB v0.7.9 in GNU Octave, you must install the following:
In all cases, CUDA libraries (libcudart.so for Linux, libcudart.dylib for Mac and cudart*.dll for Windows) must be properly installed before you launch MCX.
Qianqian Fang and David A. Boas, "Monte Carlo Simulation of Photon Migration in 3D Turbid Media Accelerated by Graphics Processing Units," Opt. Express, vol. 17, issue 22, pp. 20178-20190 (2009)