We reviewed existing methods for analyzing, in the time domain, physical mechanisms underlying the patterns of blood pressure and flow waveforms in the arterial system. These are wave intensity analysis and separations into several types of waveforms: (i) forward- and backward-traveling, (ii) peripheral and conduit, or (iii) reservoir and excess. We assessed the physical information provided by each method and showed how to combine existing methods in order to quantify contributions to numerically generated waveforms from previous cardiac cycles and from specific regions and properties of the numerical domain: the aortic root, arterial bifurcations and tapered vessels, peripheral reflection sites, and the Windkessel function of the aorta. We illustrated our results with numerical examples involving generalized arterial stiffening in a distributed one-dimensional model or localized changes in the model parameters due to a femoral stenosis, carotid stent or abdominal aortic aneurysm.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10439-014-1087-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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