Artificial Pancreas

[deleted-292395]

Hello, my name is Shalla and I am currently doing a science fair project on creating an artificial pancreas. This project is from science buddies and I wanted to know if there was another way of creating a more advanced artificial pancreas model other than creating the one already on the site. Please reply and thank you for your time!

[deleted-249560]

If you boil it down (not literally boiling a pancreas!), what is the pancreas doing? It's monitoring the blood for glucose levels and if the levels are low, it releases glucagon and if they are high, it releases insulin. The model in the Science Buddies project simply uses acidity to represent glucose and then adds a base solution to raise the pH to represent the release of insulin and the body's use of that to lower blood sugar.

Any model you can think of which actively monitors a supply of some mixed stuff,, figures out if there's too much of one thing and then does something to remove the excess would function as a model of a pancreas.

From a literal standpoint you could work with actual glucose. A number of companies offer continuous glucose monitors. They generally work by having the patient insert a small wire under the skin that's been treated with special enzymes. The wire changes properties in response to glucose levels - a small computer figures out those levels and uses a radio link (generally) to send that information to a display or an insulin pump. You could contact a company and explain you're a student studying the pancreas and would like to get access to some sensors and a hand building them into your model. It will take a little negotiating but companies very often work with students on projects like this if they know you're serious. You could try contacting Medtronics and Echo Therapeutics for starters and see if you get anywhere. You can't just buy the device without a doctor's prescription but *maybe* if you ask your family doctor, they can help you acquire a device.

If you prefer a mechanical approach, maybe a machine that takes a mixture of two differently colored balls and monitors the mixture. If it decides there's too much blue, it removes some. When I saw your question I pictured a device that sorted balls by color or size. Then I thought of Rokenbok. They made a construction set whose purpose it is to move red & blue plastic balls around a site. The red & blue are slightly different sizes (http://www.amazon.com/Rokenbok-04890-RO ... B00000IRNW) and are easily sorted by having the smaller ones drop through a hole that's too small for the bigger ones. You could also use a color sensor (https://www.adafruit.com/products/1334) and a servo motor connected to an Arduino. You could make a system that takes balls or colored candies from a mixed supply, identifies them by color and kicks out some if it finds too many of one color. This is an elaborate M&M candy sorter that might give you an idea of what I mean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7HTQai7Wwg

Depending on how well the color sensor worked, maybe a system that had a computer monitor the color of some water with food coloring in it? If it has too much of some color in it, it pumps in some other color?

The pancreas is a marvelous example of a feedback loop system and you can probably adapt all sorts of feedback loops to your 'artificial pancreas' model. The Science Buddies model is simplistic to make it easy to build. What were you thinking of in terms of being more 'advanced'?

Howard

[deleted-292395]

Thank you Howard for replying with great recommendations and tips. When I was thinking of advanced I wanted something more innovative than the procedure that exists on science buddies. The project is very simplistic and I wanted to build a model that was similar to the artificial pancreas itself, but I want to build a model that has the same concept as the one on science buddies.
Thank you for you time, Shalla.