A nonparametric subject-specific population method for deconvolution: I. Description, internal validation, and real data examples.

In a pharmacokinetics context deconvolution facilitates the following: (i) Given data obtained after intravascular (generally intravenous) input one may estimate the disposition function; (ii) given the disposition function and data obtained after extravascular administration one may estimate the extravascular to vascular input rate function. In general if the data can be represented by the convolution of two functions, of which one is unknown, deconvolution allows the estimation of the unknown one. Attention has been given in the past to deconvolution and in particular to its nonparametric variants. However, in a population context (multiple observations collected in each of a group of subjects) the use of nonparametric deconvolution is limited to either analyzing each subject separately or to analyzing the aggregate response from the population without specifying subject-specific characteristics. To our knowledge a fully nonparametric deconvolution method in which subject specificity is explicitly taken into account has not been reported. To do so we use so-called "longitudinal splines." A longitudinal spline is a nonparametric function composed of a template spline, in common to all subjects, and of a distortion spline representing the difference of the subject's function from the template. Using longitudinal splines for input rate or disposition function one obtains a solution to the problem of taking subject specificity into account in a nonparametric deconvolution context. To obtain estimates of longitudinal splines we consider three different methods: (1) parametric nonlinear mixed effect, (2) least squares, and (3) two-stage. Results obtained in one simulated and two real data analyses are shown.