Modular-Based Architecture
Designers of medical modalities like ultrasound have historically implemented custom designed hardware. Now commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) modular systems are increasingly available based on single board computers (SBC) and embedded CPU boards, comprising either:
- x86 CPU-based technology with Windows OS
or
- An open standard operating system like Linux, coupled with RISC CPU(s)
These SBCs previously used PCI parallel standards as their I/O expansion interface for data movement, with much of the equipment functionality implemented in software. In the future, these SBCs will implement:
- Higher bandwidth PCI Express (PCIe) I/O, while maintaining PCI software compatibility
- Gigabit Ethernet for connectivity to other equipment and the Internet
For your application-specific needs, you can now:
Figure 1 shows how these modular PCIe function boards can be made application independent, providing higher volumes across multiple medical modalities by separating the application-specific analog interfaces to detectors/sensors onto daughter cards.
Figure 1. Modular-Based Systems
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