Is there a way to force a value in the simulation?

Pulse Physiology Engine
1

For example, is it possible to set the Heart rate as a specific value and let the simulation continue from there?

2

There is not a way to directly do that with Pulse
But you can modify the patient in Pulse, you just have to do it properly

Pulse is a whole body mechanistic simulation
Think of if just like a real patient.
If you were sitting at your desk and you wanted to increase your heart rate, how would you do it?
You could do this in many different ways

  • Inject your self with epinepherine (drug injection action)
  • Put yourself in a stress full situation (acute stress action)
  • Do some exercise (exercise action)

This really comes down to how you are designing your training scenaio and what you are trying to get your trainee to learn. If you are just wanting to throw various non contextual physiologic states at the learner, you could do that just by loading up different states, but I am not sure that would really be an effective trainer.

For example create 2 patient states where the only difference is the Heart Rate (HR) baseline, 1 with a HR baseline of 72, and one with a HR baseline of 88

When you want the HR to “go up” just load the other state.
Note that if you had any previously applied actions those would be lost
You could possibly reapply them, but you migh not get to the desired state

Again, just modifying a physiologic factor without a physiologic cause is contrary to the Pulse model
But it is possible, but I don’t think you would get a valid scenario, but again, its up to what your trainer is trying to do…

1 Like
3

I understand. Thank you for your fast answer!

4

No problem, we would be happy to discuss how best to use in your use case if you would like

5

Thanks for your detailed reply. But how do you set up the HR, or block HR rate at value to be as consistent as it was before?

6

The first thing you want to do is create a patient object and stabilize the engine.
Here is a How_To example for this in C++
This structure is used to set the initial healthy baselines of your patient.
When the engine is stable, it will be as close as possible to the desired HR baseline you set.
You do not need to set all values.
In general, we set Age, Weight, Height, BodyFatFraction, Diastolic/Systolic BP, Heart Rate, and Respiration Rate.
The BPs/HR/RR are what you want as healthly baselines, and Pulse is going to try to get as close to those as possible.

This should get you a state you can use that reflects your intended patient

As for your second part, if you have modified the patient HR via some of the ideas I previously mentioned, to get the HR back to baseline, you have to do something to reverse what you did, so

  • Wait for the epinepherine to clear the body
  • Create an acute stress with 0 severity and wait
  • Create an exercise action with 0 intensity and wait
7

Thanks!
Can i give a little advice?