ABSTRACT
There are at least two approaches to convolution and deconvolution methods in biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetics: an abstract one, for which mathematical methods suited to handle broad classes of problems are applied to elucidate the relations between plasma level curves and the underlying processes of drug release, absorption, and disposition, or to pharmacological effects. This approach is usually preferred by workers originally trained in mathematics or physics. Pharmacokineticists coming from a medical, chemical, or pharmaceutical background frequently prefer an approach oriented toward rate processes, in which physicochemical or physiological phenomena are expressed more specifically in mathematical terms. In this instance, the initial model is frequently inordinately complex in view of the number and the quality of the data available and has to be simplified stepwise until it can be used to solve particular problems.
