Work

A physics-informed peripheral hemodynamic digital twin for personalized estimation of arterial stiffness

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Arterial stiffness, commonly assessed by pulse wave velocity (PWV), is an important biomarker of cardiovascular risk, yet conventional PWV measurements require dual-site recordings that limit scalability in clinical settings. Here we introduce a physics-informed peripheral hemodynamic digital twin framework for estimating central-brachial arterial stiffness from a single brachial pressure waveform. Using our laboratory-developed cuff device, high-resolution brachial pulse waveforms were collected in a cohort of 118 subjects. The digital twin then personalizes a reduced-order wave propagation model through PDE-constrained optimization, generating a compact parameter space that encodes ventricular–vascular characteristics relevant to stiffness. Incorporating digital-twin-derived parameters improved PWV estimation on a blind test cohort ( r = 0.67, RMSE = 1.12 m/s) compared with a baseline model using only age and blood pressure ( r = 0.22, RMSE = 1.90 m/s). These results indicate that physics-informed digital twins can enable scalable, noninvasive assessment of vascular aging from accessible peripheral waveforms.

Source: npj Digital Medicine

DOI: 10.1038/s41746-026-03431-6

Authors: Arian Aghilinejad, Alessio Tamborini, Faisal Amlani, Morteza Gharib