Systematic Hardware Integration Testing for Smart Video-based Medical Device Prototypes

This paper presents a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) verification system for intelligent, camera-based in-body medical devices. A case study of a Video Capsule Endoscopy (VCE) prototype is used to illustrate the system's functionality. The field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based approach simulates the capsule's traversal through the strointestinal (GI) tract by injecting on-demand pre-recorded images from VCE studies. It is demonstrated that the HIL configuration is capable of meeting the real-time requirements of the prototypes and automatically identifying errors. The integration of machine learning (ML) hardware accelerators within medical devices can be facilitated by utilising this configuration, as it enables the verification of its functionality prior to the initiation of clinical testing.