Conditional deep generative modeling of blood-based infrared spectra enables controlled in-silico phenotyping studies
Abstract Infrared molecular fingerprinting of blood offers a scalable, minimally invasive window into human physiology, but limited follow-up, imbalanced cohorts, and restricted access to diverse phenotypes constrain systematic studies. Here, we introduce a conditional deep generative framework for synthesizing blood-based infrared spectra that preserves individual-level structure while allowing controlled manipulation of demographic and anthropometric covariates. Using 25,308 spectra from 5,863 ostensibly healthy participants in the longitudinal Health4Hungary - Hungary4Health cohort, we train a Conditional Variational Autoencoder, a Conditional Boundary Equilibrium GAN, and a Conditional Diffusion Model to generate blood-based infrared spectra conditioned on age, sex, and body mass index. We show that the generated spectra closely match held-out real data across multiple levels and faithfully encode demographic and anthropometric information. We further demonstrate two in-silico applications: modeling of individualized healthy aging trajectories that follow cohort-level aging manifolds while retaining individual-specific characteristics, and targeted augmentation of underrepresented body mass index categories. Together, these results demonstrate the feasibility of utilizing conditional generative modeling of blood-based infrared spectra for virtual cohort construction, cohort balancing, and controlled in-silico phenotyping, paving the way toward more comprehensive and data-efficient studies in precision health.
Authors
- Kosmas V. Kepesidis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6391-7743)
- Bjoern M. Eskofier (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0417-0336)
- Mariia Seleznova
- Gitta Kutyniok (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9738-2487)
- Timo Halenke
- Selina Süzeroğlu
- Nicole Thorisch
- Moritz Jung
- Jeanette M. Lorenz
- Niklas Leopold-Kerschbaumer
- Ferenc Krausz
- Thomas Bocklitz
Institutions
- Hong Kong Baptist University (HK)
- Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology (DE)
- Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e. V. (DLR) (DE)
- Helmholtz Zentrum München (DE)
- LMU Klinikum (DE)
- Technische Universität Darmstadt (DE)
- Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (DE)
- Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems (DE)
- Munich Center for Machine Learning
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
- UiT The Arctic University of Norway (NO)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- University of Hong Kong (HK)
Publication Details
- Journal
- npj Digital Medicine
- Published
- 2026-09-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-03226-9
- Primary Topic
- Spectroscopy Techniques in Biomedical and Chemical Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Nemzeti Kutatási, Fejlesztési és Innovaciós Alap