Miracor Medical Systems

The basis for the Miracor PICSO Impulse System is the fact that the pressure in the coronary sinus increases when the vein is occluded. Therefore, the system is used shortly after an acute heart attack and builds up artificial blood pressure in the affected myocardial tissue. This artificial blood flow can revitalize the affected tissue.

BLUE-ZONE GmbH has developed a hardware-in-the-loop test system for the PICSO Impulse system to provide Miracor Medical Systems with an optimal system test of its automated impulse cardiac catheter system.

The test system from BLUE-ZONE GmbH starts at the system interfaces in order to be able to perform an automated system test.

For this purpose, sensors (e.g.: button, temperature sensor, ...) and actuators (e.g.: motors, display, ...) are separated from the system and the test system is inserted in between.

Thus the test system can either connect the real sensor/actuator with the DUT and measure it, or perform a simulation.

The combination of both possibilities reduces the test modeling effort, since the entire system does not always have to be simulated, but only the part that is actually to be tested.

As a result, the greatest obstacles in the expansion of already released software in medical technology, on the one hand the associated high verification effort, which often amounts to several man weeks, and on the other hand the fact that many tests are difficult to reproduce or expensive (destructive tests), can be eliminated with the test system from BLUE-ZONE GmbH. It enables tests to be performed as often as required and in a reproducible manner within a short period of time.

The test system brings the following advantages for Miracor Medical Systems:

• Optimization of the test cycle time from weeks to hours
• One setup for an entire system test run (test run in continuous integration possible, as no manual intervention is necessary)
• No additional test setups/test cabling necessary due to customer-specific connectors
• Special sensors or actuators are implemented individually in the test system (CPU + FPGA)