Case Study: DEMCON achieves 7x faster development of an FPGA-controlled surgical instrument with MathWorks (MATLAB, Simulink, HDL Coder)

DEMCON Reduces Development Time for FPGA-Controlled Surgical Instrument

DEMCON, a medical‑device engineering firm, needed a high‑speed, FPGA‑based closed‑loop controller for the piezo actuator in its endo‑cutter to maintain resonant frequency during surgery. Because the design required many I/O channels and operation above 1 MHz, DEMCON chose a digital FPGA implementation and used MathWorks tools—MATLAB, Simulink, and HDL Coder—to avoid hand‑writing HDL and accelerate prototyping.

Using Model‑Based Design in Simulink, DEMCON modeled a PI‑based PLL controller and plant, verified behavior with closed‑loop simulations, converted the design to fixed point, and used HDL Coder to generate synthesizable HDL for FPGA deployment; later they leveraged HDL Coder’s native floating‑point support on a larger FPGA for easier tuning. With MathWorks’ tools they completed an initial prototype 7× faster (one day versus weeks), met clock‑speed requirements without manual pipelining, implemented a late requirement change in one day, and iteratively improved cutting performance from surgeon feedback while following IEC 62304 processes.

DEMCON

Rob Reilink

Senior Mechatronic System Engineer