CANopen in X-ray machines II
Source: CAN Newsletter December 2005
The combination of complexity and time-to-market requirements of today’s medical equipment can only be met when the development of that equipment is based on a platform. Philips Medical Systems uses product line engineering as strategy to cope with the evolution of all kinds of product line family members. The success of a product line platform is determined by the chosen architecture and the external variability. In the modern product line platform, the system is dominated by component architecture. Within the development activities for a product line, there is a clear distinction between component developers and system integrators. Component developers concentrate on the functionality and price/performance of a device. They must balance price/performance scalability, synergy between requirements of different systems that can use that component, and economy of scale. System integrators concentrate on the development of systems that supports a medical application domain. They use components as system buildings blocks, and parameterise and control these components to realise their typical application. Medical systems are composed of components that are connected through interfaces. The interface is an abstract description of the internal functionality of the providing component. There may be several implementations of the same functionality. This is an important way to design for flexibility, and a mean to realise variability. Hence, a good and stable design of interfaces is crucial for allowing flexible configurations. As industrial data communication technology CAN has been used in medical systems for about ten years, starting with CAL. CAN was chosen because of the features it offers, and its low interface cost price. CAN is used as component interface for non-time-critical commands, and status & event notification.
