ABSTRACT
The identification and analysis of basic mechanisms and dynamic systems encountered in medical research and the application of this knowledge to clinical procedures has been steadily increasing. 1 To determine how these newly identified biosystems relate and change with time is both a logical continuation of research in nuclear medicine and a necessary step in transforming this new information into useful clinical procedures. The recent technological advances in experimental methodology and instrumentation needed to observe biosystems, coupled with an increased availability of sophisticated computer systems to collect, store, and manipulate large quantities of information, forms the foundation for many new analytic tools. Models of a biosystem, and the formulas used to represent them, become the method by which the experimental observables and the mathematical analysis are brought together. In the case of receptor-binding radiotracers, the response of a detector system such as emission or pinhole tomography is being analyzed to arrive at a method for evaluating receptor concentration.
