[Medical and pharmaceutical applications of principle component analysis].

Medical and pharmaceutical research leads to a collection of data that are presented in the form of tables. Examples from several fields in the medical and pharmaceutical sciences show that principal component analysis allows to visualise the information, present in the tables, and thereby to more easily interpret this information. The method is explained algebraically and geometrically. The possibility to apply principal components to develop models, and thereby relate certain measurable quantities, is shortly indicated.