Background: Arterial pulse waves (PWs) are rich in information about cardiovascular (CV) health and can be measured peripherally via wearables worn in daily life. Various algorithms have been developed to assess CV health from PWs, but their validation requires comprehensive and diverse datasets that are expensive to collect in vivo. Our aim was therefore to simu-late peripheral PWs and corresponding cardiac pressure-volume (PV) loops, providing peripherally measurable signals alongside central cardiovascular signals, for two virtual subjects: a 47-year-old man and a 47-year-old woman.
Methods: PWs and PV loops were simulated using a closed loop model developed by coupling a 1D arterial circulation model (116 arterial segments) with a 0D, elastance-driven heart model (4 chambers) and 0D models of the venous and pulmonary circulation. Model parameters for the male and female virtual subjects were calibrated using in vivo data from subjects aged 45 to 49 years old with no history of CV disease in the UK Biobank.
Results: PWs (pressure, blood velocity, luminal area, photoplethysmo-gram) were generated for all 116 arterial segments, and PV loops were gener-ated for all four heart chambers for the male and female virtual subjects. The virtual subjects were verified by comparing their in silico PWs and PV loops with in vivo PWs and PV loops respectively. Good agreement was observed, with sex-based differences in blood pressures and PV loops reproduced.
Conclusion: We generated and validated arterial PWs and PV loops for sex-specific virtual subjects based on in vivo data from the UK Biobank. Fu-ture work will produce large, sex- and age-specific virtual populations, which will be made freely available as a resource for further research.