Arterial pulse wave modelling and analysis for vascular age studies: a review from VascAgeNet

Abstract

Arterial pulse waves (PWs) such as blood pressure and photoplethysmogram signals contain a wealth of information on the cardiovascular (CV) system that can be exploited to assess vascular age and identify individuals at elevated CV risk. We review the possibilities, limitations, complementarity, and differences of reduced-order, biophysical models of arterial PW propagation, as well as theoretical and empirical methods for analysing PW signals and extracting clinically relevant information for vascular age assessment. We provide detailed mathematical derivations of these models and theoretical methods, showing how they are related to each other. Lastly, we outline directions for future research to realise the potential of modelling and analysis of PW signals for accurate assessment of vascular age in both the clinic and in daily life.