Patent ID: 7668680

Claim:
A method of testing operation of an instrument controlled by a system under test, said method comprising: inputting raw data to an independent data reduction engine configured to calculate independent reduced data, wherein the raw data is the same as raw data inputted to the system under test to calculate reduced data, and wherein the system under test is configured for controlling an instrument; calculating independent reduced data using at least one independent algorithm that is independent of a corresponding algorithm used by the system under test to calculate the reduced data; calculating independent further reduced data or metadata from said independent reduced data using at least one independent algorithm that is independent of a corresponding algorithm used by the system under test to calculate further reduced data or metadata; comparing values of the further reduced data or metadata with corresponding values of the independent further reduced data or metadata; and performing at least one of outputting a result of said comparing for use by a human user, and storing a result of said comparing in memory.