Invention:
This invention provides methods for determining and estimating joint characteristic functionals of biological and physiological processes using tomographic imaging. By modeling these mechanisms and interactions as biologically accurate yet mathematically tractable models, the statistics of which are fully described by joint characteristic functionals, this method enables the study of complex diseases, such as tumors and viral infections, and the biological processes involved with disease progression and response to treatment.
Background:
All disease processes are enormously complicated, involving many physiological processes and both patient-to-patient and cell-to-cell variability. The biologic mechanisms and interactions among them are better modeled as physiological random processes, the statistics of which are fully described by joint characteristic functionals. The mathematical underpinnings of the methods have been developed in many papers and illustrated by simulation studies of various molecular imaging modalities, but there is a need for implementations that can be used with real patient data and real clinical objectives to support clinical patient management and scientific investigations for various diseases.
Applications:
- Disease research (tumors, viral infections)
- Biologics research
- Clinical patient management
Advantages:
- Enables study of complex diseases
- Ability to model a variety of different diseases
- Fully stochastic model
- Based on proven mathematical models
