A New Generation of Biomedical Equipment Based on FPGA. Arguments and Facts

Abstract

The chapter is aiming to broaden the bridge that covers the gap between the engineering and the biomedical science communities, by encouraging the developers and the users of biomedical equipment to apply at a large scale and to promote the Field-Programmable Gate Array technology. The chapter provides a brief recall of this technology and of its key advantages: high electrical performances (great complexity, high speed, low energy consumption, etc.), extremely short time-to-market, high reliability even in field conditions, flexibility, portability, standardization, etc. The positive FPGA experience, issued from the military and the aerospace domains, is beginning to spread into the biomedical and healthcare field, where the personnel should be aware and prepared for this substantial and presumably long term advance.