The evaluation of radioactive microsphere data: remarks on the use of the BMDP and SAS statistical software packages.

We investigated the suitability of BMDP and SAS as an integrated tool for the evaluation of regional blood flow data obtained from the radioactive microsphere technique. Both packages were applied to a recent study on muscle blood flow with a 3-factorial design. The organization of data and files, the strategy of data reduction, and the evaluation by means of statistical and graphical techniques are shown. The method may be applied to any microsphere study design. A considerable amount of time can be saved and data integrity may be improved. The statistical quality of the results may benefit from the broad spectrum of statistical tests available.