Maximum entropy and its application to the calculation of drug absorption rates.

A new method is presented for calculating the rate at which a drug enters the bloodstream after dosing, given the concentration of the drug in blood at various times. The method is based on the principle of maximum entropy, which has not been applied previously to pharmacokinetic problems. The resulting input rate functions are smooth and physiologically realistic, free of spurious oscillations yet still showing small-scale structure where there is evidence for it in the data. Blood samples do not need to be taken at equal intervals, and no preliminary smoothing or interpolation of the data is required.