{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,14]],"date-time":"2026-07-14T09:04:15Z","timestamp":1784019855634,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":27,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1783382400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Complex diseases often involve distributed interactions among biological regions, physiological systems, imaging phenotypes, and clinical variables that are not fully captured by anatomical proximity, isolated biomarkers, or conventional feature-based representations. In oncology, neuroimaging, critical care, and systems medicine, distant or apparently separate biomedical sectors may show strong statistical or functional coupling associated with multimodal imaging signatures, inflammatory responses, metabolic constraints, treatment-induced changes, or shared disease-state organization. In this work, we introduce a proof-of-concept relational graph framework for representing such candidate hidden connectivity in terms of correlation-induced accessibility bridges. The novelty of the framework is that it does not treat biomedical correlation, graph distance, and network connectivity as separate descriptors but explicitly couples non-factorizable inter-sector correlation to localized accessibility compression in an emergent disease-state geometry. The proposed framework represents a biomedical system as a weighted relational graph in which nodes correspond to clinically relevant entities, such as tissue regions, imaging-derived features, biomarker modules, physiological variables, or disease states, while weighted edges encode constraints on functional, statistical, or pathological accessibility. Within this structure, coarse-grained biomedical sectors are defined as organized subsystems, and non-factorizable coupling between sectors is quantified using mutual-information-type measures. Candidate biomedical bridges are then defined operationally as localized, high-gain reductions in effective inter-sector accessibility distance. We introduce explicit coupling rules linking sector-level correlation to bridge-specific accessibility compression, including an effective distance-compression model and an ensemble-based formulation. Numerical proof-of-concept simulations on randomized modular graph ensembles show that increasing correlation strength systematically reduces effective inter-sector distance and increases bridge gain. The strongest compression occurs when correlation modulates a designated bridge architecture, exceeding the effects observed under random non-bridge or generic inter-sector modulation. These simulations are not intended to validate a disease-specific biological mechanism but to test whether the proposed correlation\u2013compression rule produces bridge-specific effects distinguishable from null graph perturbations. The resulting structures should not be interpreted as physical anatomical tunnels or direct causal pathways unless supported by additional biological evidence. Rather, they represent correlation-induced accessibility bridges: localized, high-gain routes in a patient- or disease-specific relational geometry. The framework may therefore provide a theoretical and computational basis for prioritizing candidate hidden connectivity patterns in radiomics, multimodal prognosis, physiological deterioration, recurrence modeling, and systems-level disease networks.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e28070769","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,7]],"date-time":"2026-07-07T13:19:31Z","timestamp":1783430371000},"page":"769","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Correlation-Induced Accessibility Bridges in Biomedical Networks: A Proof-of-Concept Relational Graph Model"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"28","author":[{"given":"Roxana Irina","family":"Iancu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Oral Pathology, \u201cGr. T. Popa\u201d University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 700115 Ia\u015fi, Romania"},{"name":"Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, \u201cGr. T. Popa\u201d University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 700115 Ia\u015fi, Romania"},{"name":"Department of Clinical Laboratory, \u201cSf\u00e2ntul Spiridon\u201d Emergency Hospital, 700111 Ia\u0219i, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-2791-3400","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"C\u0103lin Gheorghe","family":"Buzea","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"National Institute of Research and Development for Technical Physics\u2014IFT Ia\u0219i, 700050 Ia\u0219i, Romania"},{"name":"Clinical Emergency Hospital \u201cProf. Dr. Nicolae Oblu\u201d Ia\u0219i, 700309 Ia\u0219i, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3863-6904","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Florin","family":"Nedeff","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Agritourism, Faculty of Engineering, \u201cVasile Alecsandri\u201d University of Bac\u0103u, 600115 Bac\u0103u, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0922-740X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Diana","family":"Miril\u0103","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Agritourism, Faculty of Engineering, \u201cVasile Alecsandri\u201d University of Bac\u0103u, 600115 Bac\u0103u, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Valentin","family":"Nedeff","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Agritourism, Faculty of Engineering, \u201cVasile Alecsandri\u201d University of Bac\u0103u, 600115 Bac\u0103u, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-8582-1988","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Mirela","family":"Panainte-Lehadu\u0219","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Agritourism, Faculty of Engineering, \u201cVasile Alecsandri\u201d University of Bac\u0103u, 600115 Bac\u0103u, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-0507-002X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Claudia Manuela","family":"Tomozei","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Agritourism, Faculty of Engineering, \u201cVasile Alecsandri\u201d University of Bac\u0103u, 600115 Bac\u0103u, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Maricel","family":"Agop","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Agritourism, Faculty of Engineering, \u201cVasile Alecsandri\u201d University of Bac\u0103u, 600115 Bac\u0103u, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Alina \u0218tefania","family":"Dobo\u0219","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Physics, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Ia\u0219i, 700506 Ia\u0219i, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Drago\u015f Petru Teodor","family":"Iancu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Oral Pathology, \u201cGr. T. Popa\u201d University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 700115 Ia\u015fi, Romania"},{"name":"Department of Oncology and Radiotherapy, \u201cGr. T. Popa\u201d University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 700115 Ia\u015fi, Romania"},{"name":"Department of Radiotherapy, Regional Institute of Oncology, 700483 Ia\u0219i, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6447-0958","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"L\u0103cr\u0103mioara","family":"Ochiuz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Medicine, \u201cGrigore T. Popa\u201d University of Medicine and Pharmacy Ia\u0219i, 700115 Ia\u0219i, Romania"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7139-0304","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Decebal","family":"Vasincu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Faculty of Medicine, \u201cGrigore T. 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