Control of Blood Glucose Concentration in Type I Diabetic Patients

As the "artificial pancreas" becomes closer to reality, automated insulin delivery based on real-time glucose measurements becomes feasible for people with diabetes. This paper employs a new approach to regulate the blood glucose level of type I diabetic patient under an intensive insulin treatment. The closed-loop control scheme incorporates the design of robust H∞ controller to maintain the normoglycemic average of 80 mg/dl. Due to cost and complexity involved in testing the control algorithms to real patients, studies are done using a Type I diabetic patient model. Controller performance is assessed in terms of its ability to reject the effect of meal disturbance and to overcome the variability in the glucose-insulin dynamics from patient to patient. Computer simulations are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed technique and to show its superiority in controlling hyperglycemia over other existing algorithms.