Swan-icare project: On the efficiency of FPGAs emulating wearable medical devices for wound management and monitoring

Abstract

In this paper we examine the efficiency of FPGA-based reconfigurable systems for emulating complex embedded medical devices. We focus our analysis on embedded wearablemedical devices targeting remote wound monitoring and management. The application scenario originates from the Swan-iCare EU funded project which aims at developing an integrated autonomous device for the monitoring and personalized management of chronic wounds, mainly diabetic foot ulcers and venous leg ulcers. Taking into account the functional requirements of such medical systems, we show that FPGA based functional emulation forms a promising solution that enables easy programming of bare-metal medical applications with micro-architectural and port connectivity/availability characteristics matchingwell the requirements of the specific application domain. The hardware platform and the embedded software for the supported medical application are described in detail and a set of qualitative and quantitative evaluations are provided to show the effectiveness of the approach.