Real Time Simulation of Physiological Systems

Testing of medical equipment such peacemakers is a critical task, because any malfunction may cause the patient death or a serious and long lasting consequence to his health Thus, it should be as thorough as possible to exercise the device behavior under normal functioning as well as under faulty conditions but still fit into the project´s budget. This paper presents a real time digital simulator (DRTS) for possible use in testing of medical devices. The simulator runs a model of the physiological system (an organ or a group of organs) in real time and uses A/D and D/A cards to interface the simulation results to the real equipment. By this means, the tests can be made as thorough as needed without too much increase in the cost of testing since the simulator can be re-used in many tests.