Physiological Control Loops

Homeostasis

Feedback control in the human body, also known as homeostasis, is one of the main reasons why we can cope with a variety of changing environmental conditions and pathologies. At the IME we study these control loops from an engineering point of view that mainly focusses on dynamic systems and control. The leading themes are:

  • Dynamic modelling
  • Interconnections between the main components
  • Analyzing disturbances
  • Inverse optimal control/policy learning
  • Main causes of malfunction

Medical Devices

Medical devices help to prevent, diagnose or treat diseases and injuries. Feedback control is an integral part of many medical devices such as medical ventilators, anesthesia machines and even most imaging systems. At the IME we help to develop control systems for medical devices as well as novel, holistic state- and parameter estimation and controller design techniques. Our focus is on:

  • Model-based design
  • Design for approvals (e.g. IEC/EN 60601-1-10)
  • Robust design
  • Iterative learning control
  • Model-predictive control
  • Linear parameter-varying control