Applying a PC accelerator board for medical imaging

An AT-compatible computer was used to expand X-ray images that had been compressed and stored on optical data cards. Initially, execution time for expansion of a single X-ray image was 25 min. The requirements were for an expansion time of under 10 s and costs of under $1000 for computing hardware. This meant a computational speed increase of over 150 times was needed. Tests showed that incorporating an 80287 coprocessor would only give a speed increase of five times. The DSP32-PC-160 floating-point accelerator board was selected as a cost-effective solution to the need for more computing power. This board provided adequate processor speed, onboard memory, and data bus width; floating-point math precision; and a high-level language compiler for code development.