Tests on a virtual patient for an observer-based, closed-loop control of plasma glycemia

Exogenous insulin administration is the basic way to face the widespread disease of Diabetes Mellitus. To this aim, closed-loop approaches, though theoretically realizable according to the control theory results and to the recent technology concerning continuous glucose measurements and affordable insulin infusion pumps, require a careful and thorough testing ground on a virtual environment before arranging an in-vivo clinical setting of experiments. In this work, a model-based control law for the plasma glycemia, recently published by the same authors, is evaluated by closing the loop on a virtual patient, whose model equations are different from the ones used to synthesize the control law. That means: a minimal model of the glucose-insulin system to design the insulin therapy, and a different, more detailed, comprehensive model to test in silico the control scheme. Uncertainties on the blood glucose measurements, as well as malfunctioning on the insulin delivery devices are considered, according to the standard technology, in order to obtain an effective benchmark for the closed-loop control and to show in fact the robustness of the proposed approach. © 2011 IEEE.