Modeling and simulation of the cardiovascular system: a review of applications, methods, and potentials.

Proper function of the cardiovascular system is indispensible to human survival. However, this system is dominated by complex interactions between different physiological processes and control mechanisms. A structured analysis and a mathematical description of this system can provide more insight, and a computer-based simulation of dynamic processes in the cardiovascular system could be applied in numerous tasks. This article gives a review of different approaches to cardio-circulatory modeling and discusses methodological aspects and fields of application for several classes of models.