Case Study: Philips Healthcare achieves precise, FPGA-ready RF power control for MRI with MathWorks

Philips Healthcare Develops Smart Digital RF Power Subsystem for MRI Systems

Philips Healthcare needed a precise, linear RF power subsystem for its MRI systems to control timing and phase to within picoseconds while handling amplifier peak powers near 40 kW. Hardware teams struggled to convert architect-level C algorithms into bit- and cycle-accurate VHDL for FPGA implementation, and hand-coding HDL slowed iterations and made design predictability difficult. To address this, Philips used MathWorks’ Model-Based Design tools—MATLAB, Simulink, and HDL Coder—to model, simulate, and generate FPGA-ready code.

Using MathWorks tools, Philips modeled the RF receiver, waveform generator, predistortion, and feedback loops in Simulink, verified designs in floating- and fixed-point simulations, generated VHDL with HDL Coder, integrated in ModelSim, and deployed to a Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA. This workflow let the team identify and fix a rounding-induced spurious frequency early, replace a 24-stage FIR with a simpler design in 30 minutes (vs. ~1 week of hand-coding), and produce consistent, low-risk VHDL—improving development speed, predictability, and readiness for production.

Philips Healthcare

Marcel van Helvoort

Electronics Designer