Constrained Control of Depth of Hypnosis During Induction Phase

This brief proposes a constrained control scheme for the control of the depth of hypnosis during the induction phase in clinical anesthesia. In contrast with the existing control schemes for propofol delivery, the proposed scheme guarantees overdosing prevention while ensuring good dynamic performance. The core idea is to reformulate overdosing prevention as a constraint, and then use the recently introduced explicit reference governor to enforce the constraint satisfaction at all times. The proposed scheme is evaluated in comparison with a robust PID controller on a simulated surgical procedure for 44 patients whose pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic models have been identified using the clinical data. The results demonstrate that the proposed constrained control scheme can deliver propofol to yield good induction phase response while preventing overdosing in patients; whereas other existing schemes might cause overdosing in some patients. Simulations show that mean rise time, mean settling time, and mean overshoot of less than 5 [min], 8 [min], and 10%, respectively, are achieved, which meet typical anesthesiologists' response specifications.