Stigmergic cooperation of nanoparticles for swarm fuzzy control of low-density lipoprotein concentration in the arterial wall

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of stigmergic cooperation between two swarms of Fuzzy Nanoparticles (FNPs) and Auxiliary Nanoparticles (ANPs) for intelligent control of Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL) concentration in the arterial wall, as a novel non-invasive method for prevention of atherosclerosis. Given any desired fuzzy controller, a swarm of FNPs in the aqueous environment of a living tissue can collectively realize an accurate approximation of this controller, which is called swarm fuzzy controller. In this study, the task of the swarm fuzzy controller is to manipulate the pheromone level of the environment as output according to the sensed value of LDL concentration as input. Pheromone is a chemical substance that is used for stigmergic communication between two swarms of FNPs and ANPs. An ANP consists of a drug reservoir connected to a nanoscale valve which is controllable by pheromone concentration. The level of pheromone in the local environment of an ANP determines how much drug should be released by it. The hardware complexity of the proposed approach is lower than nanorobotics to facilitate its manufacturing. Simulation results on a well-known mathematical model demonstrate that this method can successfully reduce the LDL level to a desired value in the arterial wall of a patient with very high LDL level, while its performance is much better in contrast to the previous work of authors. Also, the mass of the released drug in a healthy wall is 16 times lesser than its corresponding value in an unhealthy wall.