Hard Real-Time Embedded Implementation of Closed-Loop Gastric Pacemaker

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Abstract

Gastrointestinal motility disorders, such as gastroparesis, significantly impair patient quality of life, yet current treatment options like open-loop gastric electrical stimulation (GES) offer limited efficacy. While recent research has proposed closed-loop pacing strategies, existing implementations rely heavily on high-level software or general-purpose embedded platforms. These systems operate in soft real-time, lacking the temporal determinism and verifiable timing guarantees required for safety-critical medical certification. This paper presents the first hard real-time, bare-metal implementation of a closed-loop gastric pacemaker on a precision-timed processor architecture. We utilize a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) framework to validate the system against a high-fidelity computational gastric model. Results demonstrate that the pacemaker successfully detects and corrects distinct dysrhythmic propagation patterns. Furthermore, static Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) analysis establishes a deterministic execution bound, providing a verified timing envelope that eliminates unpredictable execution latencies. This work provides a technical foundation for future development of certifiable, standalone closed-loop gastric bioelectronic systems.

Authors

1. HyungJoo Eugene Lee hlee875@aucklanduni.ac.nz (University of Auckland)
2. Avinash Malik avinash.malik@auckland.ac.nz (University of Auckland)
3. Partha Roop p.roop@auckland.ac.nz (University of Auckland, New Zealand)
4. Nathan Allen nathan.allen@aut.ac.nz (Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand)
5. Daniel Martinez dmar256@aucklanduni.ac.nz (University of Auckland)

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