Toward a grey box approach for cardiovascular physiome

The physiomic approach is now widely used in the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases. There are two possible methods for cardiovascular physiome: the traditional mathematical model and the machine learning (ML) algorithm. ML is used in almost every area of society for various tasks formerly performed by humans. Specifically, various ML techniques in cardiovascular medicine are being developed and improved at unprecedented speed. The benefits of using ML for various tasks is that the inner working mechanism of the system does not need to be known, which can prove convenient in situations where determining the inner workings of the system can be difficult. The computation speed is also often higher than that of the traditional mathematical models. The limitations with ML are that it inherently leads to an approximation, and special care must be taken in cases where a high accuracy is required. Traditional mathematical models are, however, constructed based on underlying laws either proven or assumed. The results from the mathematical models are accurate as long as the model is. Combining the advantages of both the mathematical models and ML would increase both the accuracy and efficiency of the simulation for many problems. In this review, examples of cardiovascular physiome where approaches of mathematical modeling and ML can be combined are introduced.