There is taught herein a real-time, lumped parameter cardiovascular dynamics model that uses features extracted from online electrocardiogram (ECG) signal recordings to generate certain surrogate hemodynamic signals. The derived signals can be used to real time animate a 3-D heart model. The model represents the coupled dynamics of the heart chambers, valves, and pulmonary and systemic blood circulation loops in the form of nonlinear differential equations. The features extracted from ECG signals can be used to estimate the timings and amplitudes of the atrioventricular activation input functions as well as other model parameters that capture the effect of cardiac morphological and physiological characteristics. The results indicate the potential of a virtual instrument that uses the model-derived signals for clinical diagnosis in lieu of expensive instrumentation.
