Simulation-Based Study of Control Strategies for Beating of Human Cardiomyocyte Cultures

Many biological systems, such as cell cultures in vitro, are complex, non-linear, and time varying, resulting in challenges for the development of effective control methods. Therefore, it is beneficial to develop simulation environments to understand dynamics of these biological systems and, for example, compare different control strategies. In this paper, we created a mathematical model to simulate temperature-dependency of beating human cardiomyocyte cultures. The developed system can be used for comparing different closed-loop control strategies and for studying how sensitive the beating of cardiomyocytes is for temperature variations. We employed the system for comparing the performance of fuzzy logic-based and traditional Proportional-Integral controllers and presented, how their performances varied in different cell culture cases. Our results indicate clearly, how the fuzzy logic-based controller can outperform the traditional Proportional-Integral controller when they are implemented to control the beating of cardiomyocyte cultures.

Automated summary

This paper presents a mathematical model to simulate the temperature dependency of beating human cardiomyocyte cultures, and compares the performances of fuzzy logic-based and traditional Proportional-Integral controllers. The results indicate that the fuzzy logic-based controller outperforms the traditional Proportional-Integral controller in controlling the beating of cardiomyocyte cultures.