Advanced Cancer Research with PXI and LabVIEW

THE CHALLENGE

Developing a medical instrument for earlier cancer detection that does not require the patient to experience severe stress.

THE SOLUTION

Using the NI LabVIEW graphical programming environment and the PXI platform to develop the world’s fastest optical coherence tomography (OCT) medical imaging acquisition system.

We chose the NI platform because of its synchronization capabilities, small size,and modularity to enable high-channel-count acquisitions.

OCT is a noninvasive, nonradiation imaging technique used for tissue visualization. Images captured using OCT are higher in resolution than images captured using techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). Recently, as a method to help detect cancer sooner and ultimately enhance the quality of life for patients, our research groups at Kitasato University in Japan developed the fastest OCT imaging system in the world.

Using the National Instruments PXI platform and other innovative technologies, we developed a data acquisition system that breaks a broadband light source into 256 separate frequency bands. All emitted frequencies are simultaneously acquired on 256 synchronized channels at 60 MS/s using NI PXI-5105 digitizers. We then analyze the acquired data and recreate the OCT image using LabVIEW.

With the NI platform, we built the world’s fastest OCT system, a huge advancement toward our goal of detecting cancer cells sooner.

Dr. K. Ohbayashi Kitasato

University, Japan

Watch a video on building high-channel-count digitizer systems.

This article first appeared in the Q3 2008 issue of Instrumentation Newsletter. 

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