Development of miniaturized mass flow meter for an axial flow blood pump

To grasp the conditions of patients and implantable artificial hearts, it is essential to monitor the blood flow rate continuously and noninvasively. However, it is difficult to monitor the pump flow rate in an implantable artificial heart, because the conventional flow meter is too large to implant into the human body, and the flow estimation method is influenced by changes in the blood characteristics and the pump performance. In particular, the power consumption has neither linearity nor uniqueness with respect to the pump flow rate in an axial flow blood pump. In this research, we develop a prototype miniaturized mass flow meter that uses centrifugal force F(c) for discharged patients with an axial flow blood pump. This flow meter measures the F(c) corresponding to the mass flow rate, and implements compensation for static pressure. Because the strain gauges are attached outside of the curved tube, this mass flow meter has no blood contact point, resulting in a compact design. To evaluate the measurement accuracy and the tracking performance, the mass flow meter was compared with the conventional ultrasonic flow meter in a mock-up circulation study. As a result, the measurement error ranging from 0.5 to 5.0 L/min was less than +/-10% with respect to the maximum flow rate. The tracking performance of pulsation flow was approximately equivalent to that of the conventional flow meter. These experiments demonstrated that the prototype miniaturized mass flow meter using F(c) could accurately measure the mass flow rate continuously and noninvasively.