An electrohydraulic totally implantable artificial heart with a motor-integrated regenerative pump and its computer control

An electrohydraulic totally implantable artificial heart which has a motor-integrated regenerative pump was developed. The system consists of left and right diaphragm-type blood pumps which are implanted in the thorax with a separately placed electrohydraulic actuator in the abdominal region. The blood pump was designed to have an appropriate anatomical fitting in a human thorax. The actuator is a regenerative pump which is able to pump fluid against a high head. The height, diameter, and weight of the actuator are 32.5 mm, 73 mm, and 350 g, respectively. The rotor-magnet of the brushless DC motor is embedded in the impeller of the regenerative pump in order to miniaturize the actuator and increase durability by reducing the number of moving parts. A 32-b microcomputer controls the motor of the actuator. The detection algorithm of the pumping condition was developed by using the TMSTR (time-sequential multiple-state transition representation) linguistic technique to control the artificial heart correctly and safely. The feasibility of the devices was confirmed by in vivo and in vitro experiments