A four compartment open model with first-order absorption.

This paper is related to the identification of pharmacokinetic parameters of a four-compartment open model with first order absorption from plasma level data. The eigenvalues of the characteristic matrix of the given system are obtained by transforming them into a single variable and the solution involves the minimization of the sum of squares of deviation of the model-predicted values of the state variables from an experimentally obtained values. The distribution volume and the lag time are also identified. Finally, the unicity of the absorption rate constant is obtained by the minimum energy principle. The results obtained with present method are compared with those obtained by the generalized least squares method.