In-Silico Works on the Control of Blood Glucose Level for Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) Using Improved Hovorka Equations

Abstract

—Artificial pancreas technology has been continuously developed over the past few years. However, there are still weaknesses found in recent technology in relation to injection of insulin subcutaneously into Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) patient. The injection of insulin into the patient’s body must be specific, exact and precise to ensure that the blood glucose level is between normoglycemic ranges, i.e. 4.5 mmol/L to 6.0 mmol/L so as to avoid hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia episodes. Therefore, this study aims to find the optimum insulin infusion rate into the patient’s body for the blood glucose level (BGL) to be maintained at a safe glycemic range. The study mainly focuses on computer simulation in MATLAB using improved Hovorka equations coupled with an enhanced model predictive control (eMPC) as its control scheme in order to control the BGL in T1DM. Only meal disturbance factor is included and it varies in carbohydrate (CHO) intake during breakfast, lunch and dinner times. The simulation was successfully carried out and its findings indicated that the safe glycemic range was able to be reached at shorter time and maintained for a prolonged period as compared to previous workers.