Creation and application of virtual patient cohorts of heart models

Abstract

Patient-specific cardiac models are now being used to guide therapies. The increased use of patient-specific cardiac simulations in clinical care will give rise to the development of virtual cohorts of cardiac models. These cohorts will allow cardiac simulations to capture and quantify inter-patient variability. However, the development of virtual cohorts of cardiac models will require the transformation of cardiac modelling from small numbers of bespoke models to robust and rapid workflows that can create large numbers of models. In this review, we describe the state of the art in virtual cohorts of cardiac models, the process of creating virtual cohorts of cardiac models, and how to generate the individual cohort member models, followed by a discussion of the potential and future applications of virtual cohorts of cardiac models. This article is part of the theme issue 'Uncertainty quantification in cardiac and cardiovascular modelling and simulation'.

Keywords: cardiac; digital twin; simulation; virtual patient cohorts.

Figure 1.

Schematic of the strategies for obtaining a virtual cohort, based on biophysical models. (Online version in colour.)

Figure 2.

Process of creating a virtual cohort. (a) Defining a template model structure for the members of the cohort, (b) constraining the parameters for the members of the virtual cohort and, (c) validating the models representing specific individual patients and the virtual cohort. (Online version in colour.)