Grey box adaptive control of mean arterial blood pressure

Grey Box Adaptive Control (GBAC), the use of parameter constrained identification with adaptive control, was compared against standard black box adaptive control (BBAC) for the automated infusion of sodium nitroprusside (SNP) to lower and regulate mean arterial blood pressure (MAP). Using a benchmark cardiovascular model, tests compared the controllers for a healthy simulated patient under 5 noise and anesthesia levels, and during sudden acute heart failure. In the challenging cases, GBAC significantly (p<0.05) outperformed BBAC in almost all performance measures. In all other cases, there were minimal differences. These results indicate that, when needed, GBAC rejected disturbances better, infused a smoother drug rate, reduced the total amount of drug, and generated a smaller MAP variation than BBAC