Short-term autonomic nervous control of the cardiovascular system: a system theoretic approach.

A non-linear model of the human cardiovascular regulation system (CVS) has been developed, with the aim of studying the short-term regulation process by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). This restricts the time interval under study to range from fractions of seconds to about 30 seconds. As a consequence, the only feedback mechanism taken into account is the baroreceptors loop. Our main guideline has been first to try to capture the main features of the system that have been observed and reported in the relevant publications in physiology--main non-linearities in the elementary components of the system, intrinsic periodicities--while keeping to a minimum the number of model parameters, with the question of identifiability from real data in mind. Also, we have tried to retain as much physiological significance to these parameters as possible, for forthcoming diagnosis purposes, while using non invasive measurements only. At the present time, no venous return has been taken into account but should be included later on. The long term objective of this research is to develop tools for helping in medical diagnosis. This may go through the detection of defaults in this closed loop system, within the framework of control systems theory, hereby using all the known concepts from that field, that have been much used for engineering systems (mechanical, electrical etc...): these include signal processing techniques as well as control algorithms or identification and detection methods.