Development of an artificial heart actuator for a compliance chamberless blood pump

The compliance chamber which is required for a totally implantable artificial heart, to compensate the volume change generated in a blood pump, makes it harder to implant the whole system inside a human body, for several reasons. To eliminate the compliance chamber from the totally implantable artificial heart, a new blood pump, in which no compliance chamber was required, has been designed by our group and was reported elsewhere. In this study, an actuator to drive this blood pump was developed. The mechanism of the actuator converts the rotation of the d.c. motor to linear motion of the pump diaphragm by permanent magnets without any connection. A prototype system was made and tested in a mock circulatory system. The results clarified the controversial points of the present system. However, the future feasibility of this mechanism was also exhibited.