  Statistical regression models whose mean functions are represented by
ordinary differential equations (ODEs) can be used to describe phenomenons
dynamical in nature, which are abundant in areas such as biology, climatology
and genetics. The estimation of parameters of ODE based models is essential for
understanding its dynamics, but the lack of an analytical solution of the ODE
makes the parameter estimation challenging. The aim of this paper is to propose
a general and fast framework of statistical inference for ODE based models by
relaxation of the underlying ODE system. Relaxation is achieved by a properly
chosen numerical procedure, such as the Runge-Kutta, and by introducing
additive Gaussian noises with small variances. Consequently, filtering methods
can be applied to obtain the posterior distribution of the parameters in the
Bayesian framework. The main advantage of the proposed method is computation
speed. In a simulation study, the proposed method was at least 14 times faster
than the other methods. Theoretical results which guarantee the convergence of
the posterior of the approximated dynamical system to the posterior of true
model are presented. Explicit expressions are given that relate the order and
the mesh size of the Runge-Kutta procedure to the rate of convergence of the
approximated posterior as a function of sample size.
