CANopen in X-ray machines
Source: CAN Newsletter December 2005
In the early 1990s Siemens Medical Solutions, then known as Siemens Medizintechnik, was faced with an ever-growing demand for more functionality combined with an immense market pressure to reduce the cost of medical equipment. It became apparent that in order to reduce costs and still provide the required functionality it would be necessary to make a paradigm shift in the way medical equipment was built. The development engineers at Siemens looked to the automotive industry for guidance. At that time CAN was beginning to make a great impact on the way cars were built. The CAN network provided a robust and deterministic medium allowing decentralized embedded control components to communicate with each other. The fact that CAN was finding such fertile ground in the automotive industry also meant that CAN technology and components would be available at inexpensive prices. So perhaps CAN could solve the dilemma of providing a communication platform capable of catering for the increased functional complexity while also reducing equipment costs.
The Siemens engineers set to work. Concepts were designed and presented, advantages and disadvantages discussed. Finally it was decided that CAN would form the communication backbone of the next generation computed tomography systems.
