Demo Abstract: Model-Based Testing of Implantable Cardiac Devices

The heart is the most important natural realtime system and its interaction with an implantable artificial pacemaker make for a perfect example of a Cyber-Physical System. The increasing complexity in implantable cardiac device software has been responsible, in part, for the surge in device recalls due to firmware problems. To ensure the safety and efficacy of the device, the device´s software has to be tested in a closed-loop with a real-time and interactive model of the heart. The Virtual Heart Model (VHM) has been developed in Simulink to simulate the electrophysiology of the heart. The VHM can be automatically translated into Verilog code using the Simulink HDL Coder and implemented on a FPGA platform. This faithful translation enables testing to move freely between model-level and implementation-level and take advantage of both. In this demo, the VHM implementation is connected to a pacemaker implementation and reproduces several safety critical closed-loop clinical cases which will not arise during open-loop testing. This work is part of a model-based framework for implantable cardiac device validation & verification.