NTT Research, Inc., the Silicon Valley research arm of NTT, Inc., a global technology and business solutions provider serving more than 75% of the Fortune Global 100 and investing billions of dollars annually in research and development, today announced that scientists at the NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab (formerly known as the NTT Research Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab) have developed a method for rapidly and scalably creating personalized cardiovascular Bio Digital Twins.

A cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin is a virtual model of an individual patient’s heart and blood vessels built from that patient’s clinical measurements. It is similar to testing an idea on a digital version of the patient before applying it in the real world. For example, researchers could eventually use a patient-specific model to compare how the cardiovascular system responds to multiple medications or several dosage levels.

The peer-reviewed paper, “Accelerating Cardiovascular Digital Twin Creation Using Precomputed Virtual Populations as Bayesian Priors,” appears in Frontiers in Physiology.

What Is a Cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin?

A cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin is a personalized computer model of a person’s heart and circulatory system. It uses measurements such as blood pressure, heart rate and the amount of blood pumped with each heartbeat to show how that person’s cardiovascular system works in a virtual environment.

Unlike a statistical model that mainly finds patterns in data, the model represents physiological cause and effect. For example, it can show how a change in the amount of blood returning to the heart affects the amount of blood the heart pumps. Each number in the model represents a real property of the body, allowing researchers to examine not only what the model predicts, but why it produces that result.

The model behind the research is called Otto. It is named for German physiologist Otto Frank, whose work helped explain how the heart adjusts the strength of each beat when the amount of blood entering it changes.

How Does NTT Research Rapidly Create a Cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin?

The NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab created a virtual population: a library of simulated healthy hearts and blood vessels generated from published physiological research. Each virtual individual contains simulation outputs corresponding to approximately 20 connected cardiovascular measurements. These include values such as blood pressure and the amount of blood pumped with each heartbeat. The measurements agree with one another and, together, describe a cardiovascular system that could realistically function.

Because the virtual population is built from published physiological research rather than records from individual patients, the library itself contains no personal patient data.

Why Is This Cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin Research Important?

Cardiovascular disease accounts for approximately 32% of deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. With a cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin, a computer simulation model that represents a patient’s cardiovascular system, physicians could test different medical treatments on the twin before applying them to the real patient. This could bring precision medicine into clinical settings and improve outcomes in cardiovascular care.

One challenge in bringing cardiovascular Bio Digital Twins into clinical settings is the need to create a patient-specific model quickly. Speed is critical in acute care, such as treating a patient in heart failure. The new method addresses this challenge by performing much of the computation in advance, enabling the creation of patient-specific models quickly while preserving the physiological foundations that make each Digital Twin interpretable by physicians. This approach could accelerate large-scale studies, virtual clinical trials and future clinical decision support. For healthcare technology leaders, the underlying virtual population offers a form of reusable digital infrastructure, developed once and used to generate models for many individual patients.

How Do Cardiovascular Bio Digital Twins Advance Precision Medicine?

Cardiovascular Bio Digital Twins could advance precision medicine in two important ways: by supporting clinical research and, eventually, informing individual patient care. In research, these models could help scientists predict how patients may respond to different treatments, compare therapies and medication dosages, and evaluate potential outcomes before conducting costly human clinical trials. In clinical practice, physicians could eventually use a patient’s cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin to compare treatment options, assess the potential effects of different medications and estimate internal cardiovascular measurements without invasive procedures. For example, a physician might simulate a patient’s response to two medications before determining which to prescribe. These are potential future applications and will require additional research and clinical validation before routine patient care.

Why Does This Cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin Research Matter Now?

Just as doctors need to understand how a healthy heart works before identifying what has gone wrong, the healthy virtual population provides a baseline before building models for heart failure and other cardiovascular conditions. In the future, the NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab plans to explore virtual clinical trials, improved drug-effect libraries and methods that could reduce reliance on invasive right-heart catheterization. Its longer-term goal is a cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin that updates as a patient’s health changes, supporting earlier intervention and a shift from reactive to more predictive care. The same foundational approach may eventually extend to other organs, including the lung and the kidney.

“The next frontier of medicine is prevention, and a cardiovascular Bio Digital Twin for every patient moves healthcare from reaction to prediction,” said Joe Alexander, Jr., M.D., Ph.D., F.A.C.C., Director of the NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab.

The paper’s authors are Iris L. Shelly, lead and corresponding author; Jon N. Peterson; Giulia Cornali; Jennifer Rohrs; Patrick E. Gelbach; and Joe Alexander, Jr. All are affiliated with the NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab except Jennifer Rohrs, who is with Embody Biosciences.

About the NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab

The NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab exists to bring cardiovascular care and precision medicine to patients anywhere, from a war zone to the back of an ambulance, even before a crisis occurs. Through research in cardiovascular Bio Digital Twins, cardiovascular care, and advanced precision medicine, the Lab develops technologies that predict disease, personalize care, and improve outcomes.

The NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab is inventing a future of healthcare that moves from treatment to prevention by identifying disease earlier and delivering more precise interventions.

About NTT Research

NTT Research is the Silicon Valley research arm of NTT, one of the world’s largest technology and business solutions providers. Founded in 2019, NTT Research advances foundational science and accelerates its real-world impact across NTT’s global ecosystem. As part of NTT Group, a global enterprise with more than $90 billion in annual revenue, serving more than 75% of the Fortune Global 100 and investing approximately $3 billion annually in research and development, NTT Research is positioned to move deep science from the laboratory toward global-scale application.

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, NTT Research brings together scientists across four research pillars: the NTT Research Physics and Informatics (PHI) Lab, NTT Research Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab, NTT Research Biomedical Engineering Innovation (MEI) Lab, and NTT Research Physics of Artificial Intelligence (PAI) Lab.

Through its annual NTT Research Upgrade summit and technology incubator, Scale Academy, NTT Research helps accelerate the path from scientific discovery to practical application.

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