FPGA technology in healthcare: A comprehensive review of hardware and software solutions for diagnostics, imaging, and patient care

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have emerged as a transformative technology in healthcare, offering unparalleled flexibility, energy efficiency, and real-time processing capabilities. This paper provides a comprehensive review of FPGA technology, exploring its architecture, programming methodologies, and hardware-software co-design strategies. We examine how these features enable groundbreaking advancements in medical diagnostics, imaging, and patient care, focusing on real-time and low-power solutions. The review further provides a critical comparative analysis of FPGAs against traditional computing platforms, including CPUs, GPUs, and ASICs, highlighting their respective strengths and limitations. We also identified key challenges in the design process, such as design complexity, development expertise, and time. Moreover, we proposed several future research directions, including dynamic reconfiguration, FPGA clustering, and the development of lightweight neural networks for edge devices. This study bridges the gap between theoretical insights and practical implementations, underscoring the significant potential of FPGA technology to shape the future of healthcare.