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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Stochastic Modelling in the biomedical sciences


Physiological processes at several scales (subcellular, cellular, tissue, organ and even population) are inherently stochastic, due to a great variety of noisy factors affecting the phenomenon under investigation.

In fact, deterministic models (representing the vast majority of formalizations hitherto employed in biomedicine) are not realistic, unless the random fluctuations remain small. An incorrect representation, omitting substantial system noise where this is in fact present, leads to poor model identification, biased parameter estimations and inconsistent conclusions.

In recent years there has been an increased emphasis into modeling the randomness inherent in many physiological phenomena, and tools like Stochastic Differential Equations (SDE), or Equações Diferenciais Estocásticas , so far mainly utilized in finance, have found initial application. 

Connected with the use of these techniques in representing biomedical processes, are issues such as identifiability, stability or periodicity, which are typically more complicated to study then their deterministic counterparts.

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Source: JG. Pires; P Palumbo; A De Gaetano; C. Manes. ‘Stochastic models in medicine and life sciences: mathematical analysis, model identification, validation and stability properties’. Proposal for PhD programme. 2014. Unpublished.

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Jorge Pires

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