Using Colored Petri Nets for the requirements engineering of a surface electrogastrography system

A surface Electrogastrography (EGG) system uses electrodes placed on the abdomen of the patient to verify the gastric myoelectric activity. Physicians use EGG systems to aid the patients´ diagnosis with gastric disorders. In this context, the results of the EGG examinations must be accurate to avoid errors on the patient´s evaluation. The medical device and the software to control the device must be safe and effective. This means that not only software behaviors must be verified, but also hardware components. Regulatory agencies verify the conformance of medical systems with these requirements. Nowadays, manufactures show this conformance performing activities such as risk management and clinical tests on devices. We present a methodology using Colored Petri Nets (CPN) in the requirements engineering to model software and hardware behaviors. This includes challenges such as which types of electrical components have to be modeled, and the level of abstraction of the models. Besides, a Matlab application is used to show model simulation results from the proposed CPN models.