|
|
|
|
|
The composite format allows including all types of tissue and blood data into a single tab-delimited text file. The advantage is that all data can be prepared and loaded at once, and that such files can directly be used for batch processing.
File Start
The file starts with the two lines 
It is followed by an optional model specification and a sequence of data sections.
Model Specification
A tissue model can be specified as follows.
The Model entry corresponds to the class name, and the Name entry to the string shown in the model list. Both can be determined in the configuration utility as illustrated below.
For reference models the reference region can be specified in by an additional line with the REFERENCE_REGION tag.
Note that the region number (starting from 0) is relevant, not the region name.
Data Sections
Each data part to be included is specified in a section starting with a line #DATA followed by a header line of the actual data, for instance in the form of
for blood data and 
for tissue data. Note that the columns are separated by tabs.
The header line contains the column headers with the units of the data column in brackets. The following column headers are keywords and determine the use of the data values. The supported keywords are:
sample-time |
Timing of blood samples. |
whole-blood |
Activity of whole blood samples, to be used for spillover correction. May also be used for calculating the plasma activity if a plasma fraction is loaded. |
plasma.1 |
Plasma activity of the first input curve, the second, etc. Plasma activity may represent the activity of parent, if the metabolite correction has been done outside of PKIN, otherwise the activity of parent and metabolites. In the latter case a parent fraction has to be loaded for the metabolite correction within PKIN. |
plasma-fraction.1 |
Plasma fraction of the first input curve, the second, etc. These fractions will be multiplied with whole-blood for the calculation of plasma.1, plasma.2 etc. Supported units: [1/1], [%]. |
parent-fraction.1 |
Parent fraction of the first input curve, the second, etc. These fractions will be multiplied with plasma.1, plasma2 etc. for the calculation of the input curves. Supported units: [1/1], [%]. |
start |
Start time of the PET/SPECT acquisition frames. |
end |
End time of the PET/SPECT acquisition frames. |
tac.name |
Tissue TAC column with the name specified after the tac. tag. |
tac.reference |
Tissue TACs with this label will be used as reference when applying reference tissue models, if REFERENCE_REGION is not specified in the model section. |
File Format and Loading
The information described above can be saved in a tab-delimited text file (.kmData) or an XLS (Excel 2003, not xlsx) file and loaded with the Load KM file entry from the Kinetic menu. Alternatively, the file be dragged and dropped onto the PKIN window or the PMOD ToolBox.