MEMS-Based High Throughput Screening Customer Case The customer needs to do frequency analysis to determine the resonant frequency of an oscillating micro-fabricated device. They will use a Laser Doppler Vibrometer to monitor the physical oscillation. This is an instrument that looks at the light reflected from the surface of a moving part to determine the velocity or relative position of the part. Analysis of the motion as a function of the driving frequency determines the resonant frequency. Upon excitation at the resonant frequency, the motion is at its maximum. The expected resonant frequencies are on the order of 1 [...]

Automatic Accelerometer Calibration System Customer Case The customer's Automated Accelerometer Calibration System provides NIST traceable calibration of most accelerometer types, whether self-generating piezo-electric or accelerometers requiring current or voltage excitation. The output of the accelerometer can be charge or voltage, single- ended or differential, AC or DC coupled, isolated or grounded. In building the automatic calibration system, the need is for optimum versatility with regards to the data acquisition card. LabVIEW is the desired control software, and Signal to Noise Ratio and high vertical resolution is of utmost importance for the small variations that occur in Vibration and Shock [...]

Satellite Down Line Converter Customer Case A customer needs to capture incoming satellite communication signals at a ground-based receiver. After analog demodulation and amplification, the signal is digitized by two 12-bit ADC chips clocked at a rate of 47.3 MHz. One ADC is used to scale a high-voltage input signal that has a mean value of 25.85 V. The second ADC chip is used to get better accuracy on the same signal, using a proprietary signal-scaling technique. The first ADC scales the full input voltage so that the second ADC only sees a small 50 mV signal around the [...]

Deep PCI Capture of Fast Charge-Couple Device (CCD) Array Data Customer Case A customer wants to digitize data from a 256x256 infrared charge-couple device (CCD) array. The array data is clocked at 4 MHz through two output channels. Exactly two clock cycles occur between 12-bit line signals, and a dozen or more clock cycles occur between successive frames. The customer wants to digitize the data for a minute or more. Since light level signals from the array can vary widely in amplitude, 12-bit resolution is required. GaGe Case Solution The customer will use the CompuScope 512/PCI with the External [...]

Image Acquisition of Three Analog Cameras Customer Case The customer is using three independent cameras made by Cidtec. These cameras provide an analog output as well as a pixel clock (of up to 10 MHz). It is assumed that FRAME_START and LINE_START signals are also provided. All digital signals are TTL levels. These cameras also have the ability to zoom in on a portion of the image to provide better resolution. These smaller images can be output by the camera at rates up to 200 to 300 Hertz. The full frame can be output at rates up to 30 [...]

Medical The following example case studies demonstrate how GaGe products and services have been successfully applied in various data acquisition medical applications. We encourage you to contact us and discuss your application in more detail with our engineering team. GaGe can provide tailored custom hardware and software solutions to meet specific application requirements. Did You Know? GaGe RazorMax Express Digitizer/Oscilloscope — An Efficient & Cost Effective tool for High-Energy Physics Particle Counting Applications View Article Whitepaper:  Use of a PC-Based Digitizer in a Medical Acoustic Microscopy System View Whitepaper Spectroscopy Transmission Electron [...]

Laser Scanning for Eye Diseases Customer Case In scanning for non-ablative eye diseases, the customer has a requirement for high vertical resolution while remaining cost effective. By shooting a low-powered laser into the eye (low enough to not cause lasting damage), they are able to determine whether there are any problems in the eye cells. The laser does cause minute damage that is repaired by the antibodies of the eye. The requirement is to capture laser reflections and analyze them. The scan takes place over the entire eye and there are therefore multiple acquisitions. The main obstacle is that [...]

Echocardiography Experiment Customer Case This customer is involved in an Echocardiography experiment. The customer already has an ultrasound imager with a built-in A/D converter which can output 12-bit image data which must be analyzed with the customer's proprietary algorithms on a PC platform. In order to accomplish this, it is required to bring 12-bit digital data at 35 MHz clock rate into a PC. This data is arriving in a burst mode with a repeat frequency of 12.8 KHz with 1000 samples arriving in 28 us followed by no data for the next 50 us. There are 512 such [...]

Ultrasound Imaging Customer Case This customer's application involves capturing ultrasound echoes from a medical imaging system, to be used in bedside monitors, defibrillators, intervascular ultrasound, ECG, etc. The live imaging rate is 30 frames per second (fps). Each image frame depicts a full 360-degree circular section. A frame is 240 echoes, so the pulse repeat frequency (PRF) is 7200 Hz, or one echo every 140 us. The customer anticipates signals at 50 MHz with a 50% bandwidth (the passband must extend to at least 75 MHz). The echo duration is 15 us; the signal size is roughly +/- 70 [...]

Ultrasonic Imaging Customer Case The customer is digitizing signals returned from an ultrasonic transducer used in the study of cardiac phenomena. At the moment, a 5 MHz transducer is being used, but the customer wants to upgrade to a 10 MHz transducer in the near future. This transducer will give him better spacial resolution. The customer needs one channel of very fast (100 MSPS), preferably 12-bit A/D conversion which is controlled by an external trigger signal. Bandwidth of the analog front-end of the A/D card or system must be very flat up to 15 or 20 MHz. The application [...]