Where is NI in the Life Sciences?

[Steve.J]

It's been a while since my last blog post, so I thought I'd give you all (y'all in Texan) some idea of where National Instruments (and LabVIEW in particular) plays in the life sciences today.  If you were able to make it to NI Week this year, you would have seen a pretty nice representation of the breadth of the applications that we get involved in - here's a sampling:

On the stage during the Tuesday keynote presentation, representatives from Animage (an Exxim Computing Company) demonstrated their use of cRIO and LabVIEW to rapidly prototype and develop the control system for a novel multimodal computerized tomography (CT) veterinary imaging system, including multiple axes of motion control.

During Wednesday's keynote (dedicated largely to our academic and educational efforts in robotics and engineering education), a group of Penn State students presented their work on the Mashavu Project- an ambitious endeavour to bring basic healthcare to the populations of Tanzania and Kenya through the promise of telemedicine. Their work helps to develop very low cost biomedical devices (scales, thermometers, blood pressure and pulse measurement, spirometers, etc.) that work with laptops and cell phone technology.

During the conference technical sessions, Boston Engineering (an NI Alliance Partner) presented a session on the development of a precision, automated microtome to create incredibly thin brain slices (from 1um down to 50nm) for neuroscience research.

Each year we hold a paper contest to highlight some of the great solutions that our customers have developed in a variety of industries, including the life sciences.  This year the winner built a system using LabVIEW, SCXI, PXI, and CompactDAQ to do functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), including providing several modes of stimulation (auditory, visual, etc.) as well as logging physiological parameters, all while the subject is being scanned with the MRI system and maintaining synchronization between all this data.

These examples demonstrate the wide variety of applications, from educational to research to commercial medical devices, where NI is making a difference in the life sciences.  Let us know what you are working on and maybe we will feature you in an upcoming NI Week keynote!

Steve