NovaRay Medical and TRT develop real-time X-ray imaging system using Nethra Imaging’s MPPA devices

Nethra® Imaging, Inc. announced that NovaRay Medical and Triple Ring Technologies (TRT) have successfully developed a real-time X-ray imaging system using Nethra’s Am2045^™ Massively Parallel Processor Array (MPPA) devices. The new system takes advantage of the highly scalable architecture of the Nethra devices by using 13,440 32-bit processors in parallel, contained in 40 Am2045 devices. The 40-TeraOPS system in an ATCA chassis has a sustained image reconstruction rate of 32 slices, each with 1000 x 1000 pixel resolution, every 1/20^th second – helping to enable up to 10 times reduction in radiation exposure.

“The Nethra MPPAs have enabled us to meet aggressive time-to-market goals that we could not possibly have met using FPGAs and DSPs.”

The system will be used initially for interventional cardiology applications where precise real-time imaging is needed to guide the accurate placement of devices such as angioplasty balloons, stents, and artificial heart valves. Existing medical X-ray systems used for these procedures use a single point x-ray source and a 2-D detector array. These systems offer only 2-D imaging capability and both the patient and physician are exposed to large amounts of radiation.

The NovaRay system uses a high-speed scanning x-ray source operating in conjunction with a high-efficiency solid-state photon-counting detector array to take up to 9,000 separate views through the patient every 1/30^th second. The resulting 40 Gbps data stream from the detector is processed by the Nethra MPPA-based reconstruction system to produce the real-time, high-resolution, multi-slice images. In addition to providing more complete anatomical information, the system also reduces radiation exposure to the patient by up to 10x and reduces physician exposure by up to 5x.

“We evaluated multiple DSP and FPGA families and massively parallel processor architectures to address our challenging requirements. We were attracted to the Nethra Am2045 device for its unique combination of high-speed I/O, computational performance, scalability, low power, and cost-effective pricing,” said Ed Solomon, CTO, NovaRay. “Working with the Nethra support team, we were able to implement a rapid prototype of our reconstruction algorithm to verify that we could meet our throughput and performance requirements.”

The Nethra Am2045 MPPA device offers patented self-synchronizing channels for an unprecedented level of programmability with massive processor scalability. Customers have proven that developers can rapidly program thousands of processors with Nethra’s Ambric-architecture Am2045 devices. Because the self-synchronizing hardware strictly encapsulates each software component, existing Am2045 code doesn’t have to be modified as new features are added to the design. Software and hardware performance also scale linearly, without adding complexity to the design.

“I was impressed that we were able, in just three months, to take the proof-of-concept design and scale it into a working system solution using Nethra’s MPPA devices,” said Winston Sun, senior director of Advanced Technologies, TRT. “The Nethra MPPAs have enabled us to meet aggressive time-to-market goals that we could not possibly have met using FPGAs and DSPs.”

“We are very pleased to see NovaRay and TRT leverage the scalability and computational performance of our MPPAs,” said Leigh Anderson, Director of Business Development for Nethra’s MPPA Group. “TRT and NovaRay have developed a truly innovative system that will dramatically help both patients and physicians, and we are glad to be part of their breakthrough medical-imaging solution.”