3. Validating Installation

3.1. Benchmarks tests

Warning: benchmark tests are only provided for Gate compiled with Geant 10.3 distribution

In order to ensure regular updates of the revised Gate software modules to be developed and ensure a faster public release, we have included in Gate V8.0 a new benchmarking system. It provides 3 benchmark tests dedicated to radiation therapy applications and 4 to imaging applications.

3.1.1. Radiation therapy applications benchmark tests

All these tests are located in benchmarks/benchRT folder.

They all consists of a water box through which a gamma (gamma.mac), a proton (proton.mac), and a carbon (carbon.mac) beam is launched.

They all have a less than 10-seconde duration.

Figure 1: BenchRT6

3.1.2. Imaging applications benchmark tests

All these tests are located in benchmarks/benchImaging folder.

The optical test mimics a bioluminescence experiment using optical photon as source distribution (optical.mac)

Figure 2: BenchImaging9

The CT test consists of a CTScanner system together with an X-ray source distribution defined using a histogram (ct.mac)

Figure 3: BenchImaging10

The SPECT test consists of a SPECTHead system in orbiting movement together with a 140 keV-gamma ray source distribution (spect.mac)

Figure 4: BenchImaging11

The PET test consists of a ECAT system together with a voxelized phantom of human brain and a source distribution of 18-F (pet.mac)

Figure 5: BenchImaging12

They all have a less than 1-minute duration.

3.1.3. How to run tests

All benchmark tests can be run with 3 different methods:

1) Automatically, every night in the dashboard See: http://my.cdash.org/index.php?project=GATE

  1. Manually, by executing make test after completing the build process

Be careful, it requires some prior adjustments in CMake configuration

Figure 6: RunBenchmarks

After make and make install, you just have to type make test to automatically run all the tests

At the end of make test process, you should see:

Running tests...
Test project /PATH_TO/gate_v8.0-build
    Start 1: benchRT_gamma
1/7 Test #1: benchRT_gamma ....................   Passed   15.04 sec
    Start 2: benchRT_proton
2/7 Test #2: benchRT_proton ...................   Passed    1.55 sec
    Start 3: benchRT_carbon
3/7 Test #3: benchRT_carbon ...................   Passed    6.11 sec
    Start 4: benchImaging_ct
4/7 Test #4: benchImaging_ct ..................   Passed   37.71 sec
    Start 5: benchImaging_optical
5/7 Test #5: benchImaging_optical .............   Passed    4.09 sec
    Start 6: benchImaging_spect
6/7 Test #6: benchImaging_spect ...............   Passed   27.70 sec
    Start 7: benchImaging_pet
7/7 Test #7: benchImaging_pet .................   Passed   14.18 sec
100% tests passed, 0 tests failed out of 7
Total Test time (real) = 106.38 sec

3) Manually, by running the same shell script for each test In /PATH_TO/benchmarks folder, type:

./gate_run_test.sh <folder>  <testname>

For instance:

./gate_run_test.sh benchRT gamma

This script will do the following:

  • Sanity checks

  • Execute Gate, generate a log

  • Get reference results (downloaded by CMake)

  • Perform some diff commands

  • Return result (success/failure)

This script needs data and macro files (in /data and /mac folders, respectively) + parameters : testname.txt

  • Contains the list of files to be compared

  • Tools to perfom the comparisons: diff, diff_stat, diff_dose …

If everything went well, you should see at the end of each test:

-----------------------
exit_status_final is:
0
-----------------------
(Gate output in gate_simulation_log.txt)