CoAutomation Recent Projects
USB Data Pump for Medical Data Acquisition
The Problem:
Acquire data simultaneously from eight 24-bit multi-channel, serial A-to-D converters every 48 microseconds and send it to a PC via a USB connection while operating inside a Magnetic Resonance Imager.
 |
 |
|
USB Analog Data Pump designed to capture small bio-electrical signals at high speed while operating inside a magnetic resonance imager. |
The Solution:
Our client is performing research to create a new medical diagnostic tool.
He needed to capture electrical brain activity in real-time while the test subject is inside a MRI.
By correlating the measured electrical signals with the results of the MRI, the client hopes to
produce a portable device, which provides some of the diagnostic capability of the MRI.
The difficult part of the project is creating a compact, but flexible device for the real-time
control of eight analog to digital converters and transmitting the data over a optical USB
connection to a PC residing in the next room. Because the client needs to vary the capture
of the data, a programmable control device is required.
CoAutomation implemented a flexible state-machine by judiciously programming a 50-MIP
Scenix microcontroller. The microcontroller directly connected to the A/D converters to provide
clocking and control strobes. Data was captured from the outputs of the A/D converters when they were ready.
The microcontroller then transferred the data to a holding FIFO.
A packet header with descriptive information was created and placed in front of the data.
Simultaneously, the microcontroller monitored the USB interface and transferred data from the
FIFO to the USB when it was available to accept new data.
|
