A NOTE ON THE COMPARTMENTAL ANALYSIS AND RELATED ISSUES IN LASER-DOPPLER FLOWMETRY

Compartmental analysis (CA) in laser Doppler flowmetry (LDF) means dec iphering the nutritional and thermoregulating flows from the measured perfusion flur. Based on the new theories proposed in [1] and [2], the CA is formulated here as an optimal approximation without directly in volving the geometric information of the vessel network. It is seen th at this approximation approach could also solve the biological zero (B Z) problem simultaneously, therefore, it actually provides a systemati c solution to the BZ problem without estimating the BZ flux experiment ally. In addition, the BZ problem with compartmental differences is re formulated, and the condition under which multiple compartments can be treated as a single one is investigated. The result, together with so me computer simulations, showed that the theory in [2] is still an eas y and useful approximation in practice. This note serves as an useful supplement to [1] and [2] and may help to solve and clarify some criti cal problems in LDF.