AnesthesiaGUIDE: a MATLAB tool to control the anesthesia

Abstract

The goals of this paper are: (a) to investigate adaptive and fractional-order adaptive control algorithms for an automatic anesthesia process, using a closed-loop system, and (b) to develop an easy-to-use tool for MATLAB/Simulink to facilitate simulations for users with less knowledge about anesthesia and adaptive control. A model reference adaptive control structure was chosen for the entire system. First of all, to control the patient’s state during the surgery process, the patient mathematical model is useful, or even required for simulation studies. The pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) model was determined using MATLAB’s SimBiology tool, starting from a previously available block diagram, and validated through simulation. Then, to achieve the desired control performances, two controllers are designed: a PI adaptive controller and a PIλ (PI-fractional) adaptive controller, using the MIT algorithm. The time response during anesthetic drug infusion for each patient can be plotted with the AnesthesiaGUIDE tool, which is also designed in MATLAB/Simulink. The tool was tested on data from 12 patients, subjected to general anesthesia, with successful results. Through this tool, the article provides a good opportunity for any user to experience with adaptive control for the anesthesia process.