Arduino control of a pulsatile flow rig. (January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Drost, S.; de Kruif, B.J.; Newport, D.
• Is Part Of: Medical engineering & physics. Volume 51(2018)
• Page Start: 67
• Page End: 71
• Publication Date: 2018-01
• Subjects: Pulsatile flow pump -- In-vitro -- Hemodynamics -- Arduino -- Feed forward control; Biomedical engineering -- Periodicals; Biomedical Engineering -- Periodicals; Physics -- Periodicals; Génie biomédical -- Périodiques; Biomedical engineering; Electronic journals; Periodicals; 610.28
• DOI: 10.1016/j.medengphy.2017.10.006
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1350-4533

Abstract

Highlights: Use of an Arduino micro-controller to control a gear pump to produce physiologically realistic pulsatile flow. More affordable than commercially available pumps, yet relatively easy to set up. Off-the-shelf components are used, and source code for control is included, to facilitate building a similar system. Abstract: This note describes the design and testing of a programmable pulsatile flow pump using an Arduino micro-controller. The goal of this work is to build a compact and affordable system that can relatively easily be programmed to generate physiological waveforms. The system described here was designed to be used in an in-vitro set-up for vascular access hemodynamics research, and hence incorporates a gear pump that delivers a mean flow of 900 ml/min in a test flow loop, and a peak flow of 1106 ml/min. After a number of simple identification experiments to assess the dynamic behaviour of the system, a feed-forward control routine was implemented. The resulting system was shown to be able to produce the targeted representative waveform with less than 3.6% error. Finally, we outline how to further increase the accuracy of the system, and how to adapt it to specific user needs.