The overall objective of our proposal is to design and implement a general deconvolution tool in the SAAM II software system. Deconvolution is a method used to estimate input into a system, such as the rate of appearance of a drug in plasma after an oral administration or the secretion rate of a gland, since these input fluxes are usually not directly measurable in vivo. A tool to estimate these exogenous and endogenous fluxes inputs is essential for a quantitative understanding of the kinetics of drugs, hormones and substrates in the body in both healthy and disease states. A novel nonparametric stochastic deconvolution approach has been developed under the aegis of an R-01 grant from BTP/NCRR which is able to cope with the peculiarities of pharmacokinetic/physiological systems. New numerical algorithms based on a singular value decomposition strategy permit the solution of high-dimensional deconvolution problems. The theory and algorithms have been prototyped and tested. The purpose of our proposed project is to implement the deconvolution tool in the SAAM II software system, and to make it easily available to the user via the graphical use interface.
SAAM II is a powerful, general purpose simulation software package widely used in pharmaceutical and medical research. Many investigators using the software want to be able to estimate inputs into the systems they are studying under various experimental inputs. Deconvolution is a tool used to do this. Making this tool easily available should have a considerable impact on our current and potential user communities.
