Development of a basic air-cooling fuzzy control system for hypothermia

Surface cooling by an automatic control system using a water blanket ensures a bloodless method of accurate brain hypothermia for cerebral protection at various stages of medical treatment. The control of temperature without any effects from the outside environment means that medical staff have less need to use their special skills for the exact management of brain temperature in clinical application, although the method is based on an easily handled surface water-cooling system. However, water is not always an appropriate medium for clinical cooling, from the viewpoint of both patients and the medical staff, because of the maintenance of the system in an intensive care unit (ICU). In order to cope with such difficulties, air-cooling is proposed based on various simulation results. Here, the aim is to realize automatic temperature control based on a fuzzy algorithm as a clinical reflection of the medical staff’s knowledge and experience. Experiments were carried out using a mannequin with human thermal characteristics in order to verify the utility of the basic automatic air-cooling control system for the treatment of brain hypothermia.