ANRAD
Success Story
ABSTRACT
The mature, stable, and predictable Nucleus operating system and the easy-to-use and efficient EDGE Developer Suite were natural choices for ANRAD’s mission-critical applications.
“ANRAD has built a good working relationship with Mentor Graphics, dating back to the development of the first LMAM/SMAM detectors based on the MCF 5206 micro-controllers. The Nucleus RTOS is a mature, stable, predictable, and well optimized operating system. This is very important to our system, as it runs several mission-critical tasks at the same time. Because our detectors are used in healthcare applications, there is simply no room for error. The EDGE development environment is user friendly, excels at discovering costly errors early, and has an optimized compiler that helps us generate efficient code.”
Serge Savard, Director of Mammography Applications, ANRAD Corporation
New Product, New Challenges
ANRAD decided to unify its LMAM and SMAM detectors on a unique platform based on the Freescale MCF5328 micro-controller. The new platform will be used on both LMAM2 and SMAM2 detectors, which differ only in the active detector surface area, while using the exact hardware and firmware support built at ANRAD. The team faced a major hurdle – maintaining the detector at a low temperature of less than 35 degrees Celsius. This required a low-power microcontroller, and a very efficient operating system that would meet the original design objectives for performance and functional characteristics of the detectors.
Enter Mentor’s Nucleus RTOS and EDGE
Developers at ANRAD needed an embedded operating system that they could trust for this mission-critical application. The team had a prior hands-on experience with Nucleus RTOS and valued its maturity and track record in similar applications. At the same time, they sought an easy to use and efficient environment, two characteristics that the EDGE Developer Suite is known for. Add Mentor’s reputation for excellent support, and the choice became easy: Mentor, Nucleus RTOS and EDGE Developer Suite.
“Although there are other choices on the market that address our development needs, we chose Mentor Graphics for several reasons, such as great support, an excellent compiler, and resourceful operating system. We are confident that by choosing Mentor Graphics, we will be able to accomplish our technical and business goals on time.”
Serge Savard, Director of Mammography Applications, ANRAD Corporation
About Anrad
ANRAD Corporation is a Canadian company – a subsidiary of Analogic Corporation, Peabody, MA, USA – known worldwide for its innovative and high-precision electronics subsystems and systems custom made for most medical imaging OEM companies in North America, Europe, and the Far East. ANRAD develops, manufactures, and integrates a broad series of direct conversion, X-ray detectors and their associated electronics subsystems for the most advanced digital radiography machines. Innovative amorphous Selenium deposition technologies combined with very-high-speed, low-level, precise, signal-processing electronics, all covered by ANRAD patents, provide for sophisticated yet economical solutions to digital detectors used in general radiography, mammography, fluoroscopy, gastrointestinal, angiography, and cardiac applications.
ANRAD's LMAM2 and SMAM2 detectors
Tools Used
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Nucleus
Nucleus OS is an efficient real-time operating system (RTOS) with storage and database management, USB, networking and connectivity, multimedia technology and advanced graphical user interface capabilities.
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EDGE Developer Suite
EDGE Developer Suite, an IDE built upon the Eclipse™ framework, provides all aspects of Nucleus and Linux development, from host simulation, through board bring-up and the creation of boot code and drivers, to operating system porting and application development.
Resources
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