Synchronous Control with Heartbeat in a Magnetically Levitated Centrifugal Blood Pump by Estimating a Pump Flow Rate with a Radial Disturbance Observer–Validation in a Simple Mock Circulation Loop–

Abstract

　The purpose of this research was to propose synchronous control of the pump flow rate with the natural heart by estimating heartbeat and estimated a pump flow rate without using additional sensors. In this study, we have developed a disturbance observer to estimate heartbeat for estimating the radial thrust, which is the force generating on the impeller by the blood flow in the blood pump. The pump flow rate was also estimated from the radial thrust by experimentally determining the relationship between the pump flow rate and the radial thrust. The validation test was conducted using a simple mock circulation loop, and the heartbeat and the pump flow rate were successfully estimated by the proposed method. Our results concluded that using the heartbeat and pump flow rate estimation system proposed in this study enabled synchronous control with simulated natural heart in a simple mock circulation loop.