Client: Braedius Medical
Braedius Medical BV develops a new camera for medical applications.
The tip of this camera, which resembles a large pen, is placed against the inside of the cheek, and enlarges the image so much that blood cells become visible. Films of up to 20 seconds are made of these moving blood cells. Analysis software is then able to recognize certain symptoms in this.
A large number of disciplines work together within this project. In this team MKSE was ultimately responsible for the electronics design, the embedded software and driver interface on the PC. The electronics, which MKSE designed together with a colleague, consists of a PCB in the camera with LVDS drivers, power controls (with automatic calibration) for 6 LED groups, and the focus motor. Everything here is aimed at keeping electricity consumption as low as possible in order to limit heat generation.
A second PCB is part of the medically certified PC as a PCI-Express expansion card. This PCB contains, among other things, the FPGA and RAM memory to capture the images from the CCD and temporarily buffer them, and then pass them on to the PC via the PCI-Express bus. On the PC the driver is responsible for communication with the hardware. A DLL then offers a simple, hardware independent interface for the application developers.