Making Fit / FitNesse Appropriate for Biomedical Engineering Research

Abstract

A prototype test driven development tool for embedded systems has been developed with hardware-oriented extensions to CPPUnitLite. However xUnit tests are written in the language of the solution; problematic in the development of biomedical instruments as the customer, the “doctor”, does not have “extensive knowledge of the domain”. The biomedical application is often prototyped within MATLAB before movement down to the “plumbing level” on a high-speed, highly parallel, processor to meet the requirement for real-time application in a safe and secure manner “in the surgical theatre” or “on the ward”. A long term research goal is an investigation of how to gain, as with standard business desktop system, the full advantage of using Fit and FitNesse as communication tools under these circumstances. We demonstrate the practical application of using indirection to permit a single set of Fit tests for both MATLAB and embedded system verification for a biomedical instrument.