Interfacing of Gradient Amplifier System for Indigenous MRI using Communication Interface Protocol

The Gradient Amplifier is a three axes system, which can be used in a MRI system to control the X, Y and Z Gradient Coils. The objective of this work is to implement the serial interface of Gradient amplifier system. It has RS422-based interface intended for control and diagnostics of MRI system host. This communication interface uses the RS-422 electrical standard with UART protocol to transfer characters between the Gradient amplifier and National Instrument compact RIO (NIc-RIO) controller. A transaction is always started by the host transmitting a telegram frame (Tlg) and the Gradient amplifier replies with a reply telegram frame (TlgRpl). It benefits read and write commands allow access to all memory mapped registers of the gradient amplifier, same or auto increment the address and the heartbeat protection is optional; only until after the first heartbeat is detected the heartbeat monitoring is started and missing heartbeat result is an error.