DesignMED Resources: Diagnostics and Monitoring

TI's Diagnostic, Patient Monitoring & Therapy Applications Guide
Features technical and product information for a variety of patient monitoring, diagnostic and therapeutic applications including: digital stethoscopes, patient monitors, electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalogram (EEG), pulse oximetry, ventilation, CPAP, dialysis machines, infusion pumps and automated external defibrillators (AED).

Medical Instruments Applications Guide
The Medical Instruments Guide from TI features technical and product information for a variety of clinical applications such as blood analysis and confocal microscopy.

ADI White Paper: Impedance Measurement Monitors Blood Coagulation
This paper describes the development of a coagulation-monitoring device for patients undergoing treatment in the critical-care environment. This system will provide rapid, automated information on patient clotting status—improving patient safety, workflow, and decision support—leading to improvements in patient outcomes.

"Rules of the Road" white paper from ADI for High-Speed Differential ADC Drivers
Applications engineers are constantly bombarded with questions about driving high-speed ADCs with differential inputs. Selecting the right ADC driver and configuration can be challenging. To make the design of robust ADC circuits somewhat easier, we've compiled a set of common "road hazards" and solutions.

TI's New Medical Applications Guide
TI's new Medical Applications Guide helps you get your medical equipment design to market faster with system block diagrams for a broad range of medical electronics, component selection tables, device details and information about development tools and evaluation modules.

Complete Analog Front End for ECG/EEG
The eight-channel, 24-bit ADS1298 is the first in a family of fully integrated analog front ends (AFES) for patient monitoring, portable and high-end ECG and EEG.

Medical Dev Kit - Electrocardiogram Analog Front End Module Demo
The TMDXMDKEK1258 Electrocardiogram (ECG) Analog Front End (AFE) module module is part of the ECG medical development kit (MDK), which consists of the ECG AFE module, a processor board (C5515 DSP evaluation module), and a set of collateral and C5515 based application sample code to implement the ECG application.

Medical Dev Kit - Pulse Oximeter Analog Front End Module Demo
The TMDXMDKPO8328 Pulse Oximeter (PO or SpO2) Analog Front End (AFE) module which consists of the PO AFE module, a a processor board (C5515 DSP evaluation module), and a set of collateral and C5515 based application sample code to implement the PO application.

TI's Fully Integrated 8-Channel Analog Front-End
AFE5805 is a complete analog front-end device specifically designed for ultrasound systems that require low power and small size.

The Incredible Versatile Op Amp
As this paper from ADI shows us, Op amps are used in all aspects of medical equipment design, from dc to video, and from low level precision input to high power output. They buffer and smooth the inputs and outputs of data converters. Newer amplifiers handle differential signals, control gain, and have internal supplies to extend their signal range.

Solutions for the Medical Equipment Market
This paper details the many advantages of using an FPGA in the design of a medical electronics system.

ProASIC3, THE INDUSTRY'S LOW-POWER FPGAs
The ProASIC3 families of flash FPGAs offer a breakthrough in power, price, performance, density, and features for today's most demanding high-volume applications, including those in the medical space. ProASIC3 devices support the ARM7 and ARM Cortex-M1 soft processor IP cores, offering the benefits of programmability and time-to-market at costs as low as $0.49.

Power-Aware FPGA Design
Power consumption requirements in medical products that can store, transmit, and receive information have catapulted system architects and board and chip designers into a new realm. The goal of this paper is to examine each design step and component of system power with the purpose of providing techniques to reduce wasteful power consumption.

Actel SmartFusion: Intelligent, Innovative Integration
The whole point of an FPGA is flexibility. We could also mention integration. But then there is cost savings. So the whole point of an FPGA is flexibility, integration and cost savings. Yet there is also power reduction. And then there's security… All these advantages (and others besides) have made FPGAs very popular over the years. Actel's family of SmartFusion chips takes all the traditional advantages of FPGAs and combines them with equally flexible analog circuitry and the world's most popular embedded processor.

Actel SmartFusion, the Intelligent Mixed Signal FPGA
SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGAs are the only devices that integrate an FPGA, an ARM Cortex-M3 processor, and programmable analog, offering full customization, IP protection, and ease-of-use. Based on Actel's proprietary flash process, SmartFusion devices are suited for hardware and embedded medical designers who need a true SoC that gives more flexibility than traditional fixed-function microcontrollers without the excessive cost of soft processor cores on traditional FPGAs.

Design Made Easy With Mixed-Signal FPGAs and State of the Art Software Tools
Since the early years of embedded processor design and FPGA design, silicon advancement and design techniques for each have evolved independently. This leads to two distinct design flows, styles, and engineering disciplines. The relatively recent addition of mixed‐signal FPGAs adds the complexity of analog into the mix. This paper examines the evolution path for FPGAs with embedded processors, and the design tools that support them, and considers whether engineers need to evolve their techniques to accommodate the integrated silicon or whether they can continue to manage their boundaries at the silicon level instead of the board level.

Low Noise Signal Conditioning for Sensor-Based Circuits
Minimizing system noise in low power, cost conscious designs is critical. To attain the lowest noise floor and best performance from signal conditioning circuitry, designers must understand component level noise sources and account for them when calculating the overall noise of an analog front end—it is critical to read and understand beyond the limited data sheet noise specs in order to achieve high resolution with very small signals. Every sensor has its own noise, impedance, and response characteristics, so matching these to the analog front end is an important part of the design process. There are a number of ways to calculate the noise of a circuit—all of these should start with configuring the signal conditioning circuitry optimally before conducting the noise analysis and calculation. If there is a good SPICE model available for the op amp, using SPICE is the easiest approach.