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Product category: VMEbus Boards and Assemblies
News Release from: Force Computers | Subject: CHAMP
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 22 November 2002

VME wins brain-scanning medical application

Force Computers has gained an important medical design win for its CHAMP product line in the application of magnetic source imaging for powerful diagnostic brain scans

Force Computers has gained an important medical design win for its CHAMP product line in the application of magnetic source imaging (MSI) for powerful diagnostic brain scans. Based on quad G4 PowerPC processors, CHAMP - short for common heterogeneous architecture for multiprocessing - VME server blades and associated PCI mezzanine cards (PMCs) and software libraries provide a much-needed open systems solution for MSI market leader 4-D Neuroimaging that reduces its product's time to market and complexity of system integration.

Combined with software porting and application customisation, Force delivered a complete turnkey solution that maintains backward compatibility with 4-D's current legacy platform.

"When we started working with 4-D Neuroimaging, the situation had reached a critical juncture - the hardware in its current MSI system was rapidly becoming obsolete and the engineering staff that had designed it were no longer onboard", said Robert Hoyecki, Director of Application Engineering for Force's High-Density Computing group.

"With only a limited window of opportunity in which to work, we had to provide a solution that reduced the number of boards in the system while ensuring it integrated with 4-D's legacy equipment - all before any of their customer delivery dates would be affected.

We were able to fulfil all these requirements with a CHAMP-based system".

As a robust quad G4 VME server blade, CHAMP-AV provides four 400-500MHz processing nodes and adjacent dual 66MHz/64bit PCI connections for a high level of multiprocessing power and bandwidth needed by 4-D's brain scanner, the Magnes 3600WH large-array biomagnetometer.

Used for magnetoencephalography (MEG), a medical-imaging application that enables completely non-invasive measurement of the body's neurological function not possible with even the most advanced MRI or CT scans, the Magnes 3600WH is specially designed for application to surgical planning for patients with brain disorders such as brain tumours and intractable epilepsy.

To enable integration of the company's proprietary I/O boards into this MEG system, Force used its FPGA-based general-purpose I/O (GPIO) PMC module to emulate their C40 interfaces in the new solution, which enabled 4-D to avoid complete replacement.

Also, to reduce board count in the system and compress development time, Force's signal processing software library was employed to provide value-added functionality.

The software library gave Force developers an easy-to-use method of programming the CHAMP-AV's AltiVec technology, allowing focus on 4-D's MEG application.

After porting of existing software to the CHAMP architecture and minor software changes to 4-D's requirements, the completely integrated hardware-software solution was boxed up and shipped out.

"We spelled out our immediate processing requirements as well as our medium-term vision for our products", said Eugene C Hirschkoff, Vice President for Engineering at 4-D.

"The Force team produced a system that performs very well now and which gives us flexibility to add functionality down the line in a very cost-effective manner".

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