/> “A key factor of our development strategy is to accelerate completion of new products,” explains Adrian Smith, linear accelerators product system engineer for Elekta. “Hence it is important that we can quickly port proven software applications to a variety of products to enhance reliability and reduce time to market.”

Elekta specializes in systems and solutions for radiotherapy and radiosurgery for the treatment of cancer and brain disorders. The Elekta Synergy image-guided radiation therapy system uses high-resolution imaging taken in 3D and at the time of treatment. By streamlining the processes of assessing patients and beginning treatment, surgeons are able to commence treatment directly. For its new treatment system, and subsequent generations of products, Elekta sought a higher performing solution with hard partitioning that could allow other applications to run concurrently without interfering with each other.

According to Adrian Smith, “LynuxWorks provided us with a stable, fast, POSIX compliant RTOS with a multicore roadmap and quality developer tools. This has allowed us to further enhance our strategy to deliver solutions that are always the safest and best performing on the market and to introduce new products quickly at competitive prices.”

Development of the RTOS image, using LynxOS-SE, was carried out at Elekta’s UK design center in Crawley, West Sussex. A small team of engineers who are experienced in real-time development, completed the design, including porting and writing of drivers, within project timescales. The portability and open-standards aspects of LynxOS-SE were fundamental to achieving this short time to availability of the first prototype image.