A method is provided for determining a central aortic pressure (AP) wave-form for a subject. The method includes measuring a peripheral artery pressure (PAP) waveform from the subject, employing a distributed model to define a pressure-to-pressure transfer function relating PAP to AP and a pressure-to-flow transfer function relating PAP to a central arterial flow in terms of the same unknown parameters, estimating the unknown parameters by finding the pressure-to-flow transfer function, which when applied to the measured PAP waveform, minimizes the magnitude of the central arterial flow waveform during diastole, and applying the pressure-to-pressure transfer function with the estimated parameters to determine an AP waveform for the subject.