WebiSmarts – New Web-Based, Area and Stack Monitoring Software Architecture

MediSmarts is a well-established and recognized radiation monitoring system that has been in intensive use by a large number of cyclotron facilities for more than 15 years. The modular system is comprised of three main components that interconnect within one communication network: detection units, data processing units and a dedicated control software. The software is used for data collection and assessment of the radiation status in real-time conditions as well as for historical analysis. The technological advancements in the system infrastructures over the years has challenged us to reassess the MediSmarts architecture and to match it to modern expectations and capabilities.

In this work, we present a new radiation monitoring software system that is based on server-client architecture, where the client is independent of the operating system platform and does not need any hardware to be connected directly to his software-running device (PC, mobile phone, etc.). In this new approach, due to adopted web methods, there is no need to install the application on each client’s computer. We avoid the need for personalized libraries for each user by using the abilities of a web browser in the monitoring application.

The new architecture – WebiSmarts – uses web technology and server communication tools for implementing cross-platform monitoring application. The WebiSmarts is stored on a server and can serve many clients by demand. The web server runs the site scripts, manipulates the database and activates the generic communication processes that are responsible for communicating with all the monitoring units on site.

The server is designed to deal with hundreds of millions of real-time records. Manipulation of this magnitude derives a high cost in resources. Thus, the first challenge is to manage and update asynchronously all connected clients to the server. For this purpose, we use web bi-directional Web Sockets that allow rapid update of the clients.

The second challenge is compressing the real-time data in a manner that also enables us to retrieve big data fast, without slowing down the client’s user experience and keeping the integrity of data. In order to make our database compatible for big data we use the latest methods for building and creating small-sized and compact tables (Database optimization) that are in turn influence on the size of data that will be sent to the clients. An additional method that was used to manipulate data is organizing the structure of the saved real-time data with indexes and packets ordered by dates. Utilization of both methods enable fast retrieve (

The communication network of the WebiSmarts was also upgraded to use TCP protocols based on the Ethernet infrastructure in order to match to the current hardware in-use.

We believe that the new system architecture will provide a seamless solution for the clients by combining the capability to store large amounts of data and simultaneously retrieve that data in a very short time. The use of a web based platform enables an installation free environment allowing unlimited sharing capabilities over the entire network irrespective of type of machine or operating system.