Depth of hypnosis regulation using nonlinear control approach

Anesthetic drug infusion rate must be examined continuously during surgical procedures to prevent the patient from adverse post-operative reactions. The idea of automated systems for propofol infusion has inspired control engineers to come up with a more sophisticated and safe system that handles optimum delivery of the drug during surgery. Most of the research work in anesthesia infusion employs linear control strategies but they are not good at handling uncertainties present in the system due to large inter-patient variability. The novelty of this research work lies in using nonlinear control technique, Sliding Mode Control, for the optimum delivery of drug during surgery. This study is intended to explore the true potentials of this nonlinear control approach for anesthesia infusion systems. The designed control law is verified using a real dataset of 8 different patients undergoing surgery. All the patients achieve the desired hypnosis level within the acceptable range for surgery.