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What is an FPGA?
Innovations in healthcare and subsequent areas such as medtech solutions and devices are driving therapies, diagnoses, access, connection and product portability. AI-based technologies and sophisticated algorithms are being deployed for analyses in real-time and point of care decision-making. Field programmable gate array design (FPGAs) are microchips or integrated circuits that contain tables of lookup functions and flip-flops to create logic blocks, gates (AND, OR, NOR, NOT, XOR, and XNOR) sequential circuits, interconnects through programmable switches preset or configured to execute logical operations. They render certain benefits such as quick production runs, high computing power, low development costs, faster design cycles, low power consumption, adaptability to changes via programmable routing connects and program error correction or specialized design upgrade/iteration post-manufacturing, as compared to application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) that are fixed during fabrication. These are used to build hardware circuits where the scripter selectively bypasses and activates various route signals and logical blocks through intended paths.
It is the most common choice for rapid prototyping, custom task support and flexible development where the hardware needs to be reconfigured. It is because of their programmable, flexible, versatile, efficient, scalable and high-performance nature that FPGAs are ideal for medical devices design. This design consists of reconfigurable logic gates that ease the acceleration of reprogrammable, future-proof medical device development and customizations as per client requirement for the end application. The FPGA market was valued at approximately US $12.1 billion as of 2024 and is expected to reach a value of US $25.8 billion by 2029, surging at a CAGR of 16.4% during this forecast period. This type of gate array design is on the rise due to their integration in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), data centers, 5G technologies for software-defined networking (SDN), high computation and real-time processing applications. As nowadays FPGAs stand at the forefront of the healthcare domain, let us explore their applications, advantages and challenges in this blog.
Source: Grand View Research
Growing market size of field programmable gate array design during forecast period 2020 to 2030
Key Applications of FPGA Design
The design flow of an FPGA circuit includes high level digital circuit design using HDL (VHDL, Verilog), followed by translation of HDL into Register Transfer Language (RTL) representation for functionality simulation, conversion into gate-level netlist (gates and flip-flops representation of digital circuit) and mapping to FPGA’s resources (CLB, interconnects, DSP slices) using bitstream and place-and-route generation. Given below are some of the applications of field programmable gate arrays in the healthcare domain –
Medical Diagnosis
FPGAs are useful in driving new capabilities and high-performance in advanced medical imaging, processing, point-of-care and diagnostic procedures. They fasten backend processing through stitching, filtering noise, recognizing patterns, extracting features and generating visualizations in technologies such as computed tomography (CT) that reconstruct anatomical models from X-ray and other radiological images. These assist in collecting and analyzing data, conditioning signals as well as flagging anomalies in real-time during diagnostic scans and early disease detection using next-generation sequencing technologies (NGS, DNA sequencing, genomic analysis, base calling, base alignment, variant calling etc.) for supporting decisions in time-sensitive cases.
Field programmable gate array design also helps in increasing the accuracy of real-time processing of point-of-care tests such as cardiac biomarkers, infectious diseases, blood glucose levels, pathogen detection and molecular diagnostics (interpretation of nucleic-acid testing and protein-based testing). FPGAs allow real-time signal processing in EEG and brain-computer interfaces to detect abnormalities like epilepsy, sleep disorders, ECG to detect arrhythmias, respiratory monitoring to analyze lung functions, and computer-aided diagnostics (CAD) for providing automated insights to radiologists.
Wearable Devices
The compact and miniaturized versions of these array designs support low power operations for wireless connectivity and longer battery life in patches, biomarkers and sensors integrated in remote patient monitoring systems and medical devices, thus supporting vital sign tracking. They support patient’s comfort through real-time data transmission via Bluetooth and wireless fidelity in cloud platforms for telemedicine and mobile applications for care management.
Sample internal structure of field programmable gate array design
Therapy Delivery
These include ventilators, infusion pumps, neural stimulators, drug (nanoparticle, liposomes, CAR-T cells) delivery systems, automated scaffold oxygen therapy equipment and concentrators through nasal cannulas, cell therapy devices and other custom medical diagnosis solutions etc. In these cases, FPGA are reliable in terms of precise delivery control, safe dosage levels, parallel processing, customized logic as per patient requirement, simultaneous and continuous multiple sensor monitoring, fault prediction and fail-safe mechanism, parametric tuning in life support equipment and more.
Implantable Devices
Neuroprosthetics and implantable devices are designed to enhance quality of life in the case of people with disabilities. Field programmable gate array design assists in customization of these devices as well as real-time processing of patient feedback, for example, FPGAs in cochlear implants process sound signals for simulating auditory nerve and perceive sounds, in retinal implants, they process visual input to stimulate retinal nerves to restore partial vision in case of degenerative diseases, and in deep brain stimulation devices (DBS) they regulate electrical stimulation patterns to manage tremors and Parkinsons’ disease etc.
Advantages of FPGA Design
Given below are the various benefits of using FPGA in medical devices –
1. Flexible Architecture: Integration of FPGAs in devices diminishes the total time required to design, test and launch as compared to ASIC due to their reconfigurable architecture. Medical device designers can alter logic functions post contract manufacturing for medical devices or during medical prototype development without fabricating new chips, whereas the wait time in case of ASIC may increase due to fabrication requirements per alteration. Field programmable gate array design enables quicker design changes, iterations, validation, scalability through additional logic blocks and mass production relative to other production runs.
2. Field Upgrade: Post-deployment, the lifespan of the medical device can be increased with features such as field upgradability, which also assists in addressing bugs in designing, updating algorithms and vulnerability issues in security. Such reprogramming is not possible in the case of ASICs and microcontrollers; therefore, FPGA upgrade provides apt return on investment over the device’s service period, avoids obsolescence and adaptability to various clinical applications.
3. Parallel Processing: FPGAs showcase custom hardware logic, tailored data paths, precise timing and parallel processing to enable low latency, high throughput, workload optimization and power efficiency in multiple computationally intensive AI/ML use cases in the healthcare domain. FPGA design also features multi-functionality including communication, data acquisition and performance metrics consolidated into a single chip instead of several separate ones, making them suitable for medical devices with power and space constraints in diagnostics.
4. Power Efficiency: Due to features like low-latency or real-time data processing and high-performance computability, FPGAs are suited for time-sensitive operations, complex algorithms and prompt results within optimal power consumption limits. This is useful in the case of battery-operated and portable medical devices like blood glucose meters, pulse oximeters, electrocardiograms etc. for monitoring bio signals, vital signs and responding to risky situations.
5. Others: FPGAs can adapt to various use cases due to their scalable nature and cost-effectivity. They support analog and digital interfaces to simplify integration, design reuse with IP cores, enhance secure boot and hardware encryption, increase product lifespan through reprogramming and accelerate development while minimizing manual efforts.
Comparative study of FPGA design vs. Microcontroller vs. ASIC vs. Programmable Logic Device
Challenges of FPGA Design
1. Expertise: Programming circuits with the complexities of gate arrays requires ample expertise in VHDL, Verilog and other hardware description languages (HDLs). Specific product lifecycle and modeling considerations while designing parallel architectures in digital logic design, need to be kept in mind, as compared to plain sequential software development. Moreover, it requires a specific set of skills and domain expertise for building reprogrammable hardware design.
2. Verification: Functionalities of FPGA need to undergo thorough test-based verification, performance analysis and bug detection. Commonly, simulation, clinical evaluation and certification for confirmation of timing, faults and safety in terms of functionalities and electrical parameters are required. Post-deployment, validations for updating patches and upgrades throughout the device’s lifetime may be needed in case of field programmable gate array design as compared to ASIC that feature fixed-function circuits.
3. Investment: There are uncertainties related to triggers and management of upgrades of devices deployed in the field that may be automatic or user/patient-initiated and may need recertification as per changing industry standards and FDA regulations for medical devices. FPGA platforms require continuous maintenance, and this leads to additional investments in complexities of development, medical device software testing and management to completely realize the device’s capabilities in the long term.
Harness the Potential of FPGA Design with KritiKal
FPGAs are flexible, affordable, can be developed quickly in production runs and reprogrammable in nature. Due to their dynamic configurability, 5G deployment and rapid innovation in medical devices can be easily scaled. In the current scenario, FPGA production faces certain challenges such as lack of standard validation methods, advancements in logic density, embedded processors, and packaging. KritiKal Solutions assists you in overcoming related challenges such as delayed functioning, viability and low area efficiency of FPGAs as compared to ASICs.
We accelerate FPGA development, simplify its design and support real-time processing, which is ideal for diagnostic tools, wearable devices, data intensive applications and compact, efficient health tech. With our adaptable, future-proof FPGA design, business can support development of smarter and personalized devices. Please get in touch with us at sales@kritikalsolutions.com to build flexible, high-performance medical devices tailored to your evolving clinical needs and realize your healthcare technology requirements.
Santosh Yadav currently works as a Firmware Engineer at KritiKal Solutions. He has over 4 years of experience in the embedded systems domain and is proficiently skilled in C/C++, embedded C, SPI protocol, I2CI2C, UART, ADC, Flash Memory, Bootloader, RTCRTC, RTOS, CAN bus, EEPROM and more. With his ability to ensure on-time project deployment with the expected quality, he has assisted KritiKal in delivering various projects to some major clients.