Case Studies | Spectrum

Shrunken MRI scanner helps in saving lives of sick babies

MRI scanners are a key diagnostic tool but they are big, very heavy and need liquid helium to cool them. Neoscan Solutions invented an MRI scanner much smaller and lighter which could be placed directly in the children's ward of the hospital, to keep journeys short and to scan sick babies in their sleep. Key to the much smaller design is the use of digitizers and AWGs by Spectrum Instrumentation that offer sub-nano second, coherence precision to generate the scanner-signals and capture the results.   Read More

AWG-card by Spectrum used to move around single atoms

How do you determine what is going on when you can’t actually see the components in the system you are investigating? This is the challenge when investigating the quantum behavior of electrons in a lattice of ions. The solution being created by the Physics Department at the University of San Diego, California is to build a model that is slightly larger with observable components of atoms moving in an optical lattice.   Read More

Digitizers used for intelligent road-radar to detect wild animals

Every two minutes there is an accident caused by wildlife on German roads at a cost to the insurance industry of more than 600 million euros in 2015 alone. To address this, the Universities of Applied Sciences of Ulm and Heilbronn along with industrial partners have created "SALUS". With a mix of radar, optical cameras and infrared sensors plus neural networks, a machine-learning-system is designed to be able to differentiate between pedestrians, cars, bicyclists, motorbikes, deer, foxes, wild boar etc. predicting the behavior of these objects. The system then sends warnings to car drivers and other road users to prevent accidents. The data of the micro-Doppler radar is gathered by a Spectrum Instrumentation PCIe digitizer card M2p.5926-x4 that provides the required number of channels and bitwidth.   Read More

256 Channel Digitizer system for Fusion Research

Fusion has long been viewed as the ultimate goal for energy generation. British company First Light Fusion (FLF) is pioneering a very different approach and launch a projectile to hypervelocities at a target which requires very high levels of precision to achieve and so they selected 32 digitizers from Spectrum Instrumentation to monitor the results.   Read More

Fast Digitizer from Spectrum enables breakthrough in cell sorting

Cell sorting plays a fundamental role in molecular biology, pathology, immunology and virology research. It requires the ability to rapidly search through and sort out cells based on their unique chemical features and shapes. The Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo has developed an intelligent Image-Activated Cell Sorter (IACS) with an ultra-fast Spectrum Instrumentation digitizer at the heart.   Read More

Atmospheric daylight Lidar for Mesosphere research

Atmospheric research uses pulsed laser beams to measure temperature and wind speed along the beams by measuring the Doppler shifted and backscattered light at 100 km height in the atmosphere. The returning light signals are very weak and can be blocked by sunlight, but The Leibniz Institute for Atmospheric Physics (IAP) has solved this problem: they developed the world’s only portable instrument that can be used during the daytime and it has already provided new insights into Antarctic atmospheric conditions.   Read More

DIAL - Differential Absorption LIDAR

Industrialization in the modern world has become the primary cause of environmental atmospheric pollution. As such, the study of industrial pollution, and its various components, has become a major area of importance. For example, in China the Ministry of Environmental Protection has stipulated the monitoring of atmospheric levels for sulfur dioxide (SO2) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx), which are the common dangerous emissions found near industrial zones.   Read More

High Amplitude Time Reversal Focusing of Acoustic Waves

The ability to focus waves offers interesting possibilities in a number of fields such as communications, ultrasound, nondestructive testing (NDT), medical science and audio. At the Acoustics Research Group, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Brigham Young University, in the USA, research is being undertaken using a Spectrum AWG and Digitizer.   Read More

15 year old Spectrum digitizer cards still playing a vital role at DESY

DESY, short for Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, is based in Hamburg, Germany and operates particle accelerators to investigate the structure of matter. The accelerators run 24/7 for international experimenters so it is vital to have equipment that can be relied on to work perfectly and for many years.   Read More

Over 140 Digitizers and AWGs used at CERN

in the machine protection systems of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The cards are used to check that the particle beams have been accurately deflected. Incredible precision is required for this as two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light in opposite directions in the 27 km LHC accelerator ring.   Read More

AWG used for atomic experiment at Stuttgart University

The Stuttgart University has chosen a Spectrum Arbitrary Waveform Generator for their experiments in which single atoms in a diamond are replaced by nitrogen atoms. This method is a base for applications like a magnetic field detector at the atomic level or a qubit in a quantum computer.   Read More

digitizerNETBOX for high magnetic fields

The International MegaGauss Science Laboratory  is part of the Institute Solid State Physics (ISSP) at the University of Tokyo. As part of a major push to optimize the magnetic fields generated by the laboratories MegaGauss machine it is important to synchronize the trigger events that fire banks of large capacitors. ISSP required a fully synchronous 10 channel digitizer system that delivers a single shot sampling rate in excess of 1 gigasamples per second (GS/s).   Read More

AWG for Quantum Research

Precision is always important in research and there can be few research areas needing greater precision than that of quantum research. The Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the University of Innsbruck, Austria needed an Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG) to generate a wide variety of signals for their research.   Read More

REMPI Mass Spectroscopy

In Mass Spectrometry the ion source plays a key role in determining the type of sample that can be analyzed by a particular spectrometer. One technique that offers great potential for the pharmaceutical industry is resonance-enhanced multi-photon ionization (REMPI). REMPI is a laser-based gas phase spectroscopy combined with ab initio calculations generating precise structural information on molecules such as neurotransmitters.   Read More

Real-time high-speed logger for embedded systems

CPU based embedded systems now play an increasing part in the monitoring and control of the mechanical and electrical components in many areas of our technological environment. This article shows the realization of a verification tool to help reduce the cost of measuring, optimizing and verifying the timing performance of critical real-time embedded systems within the avionics and automotive industries.    Read More

OCT application for skin cancer diagnosis

The VivoSight® OCT scanner uses the technique of swept-source Optical Coherence Tomography (SS-OCT) for cross-sectional imaging of skin. This is a significant new tool to assist in diagnosis and treatment of skin cancers and other skin conditions. The Spectrum M2i.4022-exp card with 4 channels 20 MS/s has been installed in a standard desktop PC, combined with laser interferometer, detector and associated power supply. All modules are placed on a trolley with a TFT screen fixed at the top allowing the operator to easily see the scanned images during patient examinations.   Read More

Automotive Data Recorder

The request was for a complete solution for portable recording of dynamic mixed mode (analog and digital channels) data during test drive. The data should be replayed and analyzed later in Research and Development laboratory. A full working system including operation software was needed.    Read More