Targeted drug delivery (TDD) modality promises a smart localization of appropriate dose of therapeutic drugs to the targeted part of the body at reduced system toxicity. To achieve the desired goals of TDD, accurate analysis of the system is important. Recent advances in molecular communication (MC) present prospects to analyzing the TDD process using engineering concepts and tools. Specifically, the MC platform supports the abstraction of TDD process as a communication engineering problem in which the injection and transportation of drug particles in the human body and the delivery to a specific tissue or organ can be analyzed using communication engineering tools. In this paper we stand on the MC platform to present the information-theoretic model and analysis of the TDD systems. We present a modular structure of the TDD system and the probabilistic models of the MC-abstracted modules in an intuitive manner. Simulated results of information-theoretic measures such as the mutual information are employed to analyze the performance of the TDD system. Results indicate that uncertainties in drug injection/release systems, nanoparticles propagation channel and nanoreceiver systems influence the mutual information of the system, which is relative to the system's bioequivalence measure.

中文翻译：

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靶向药物递送中的信息理论模型和分子信号分析。

靶向药物输送（TDD）方式有望在降低系统毒性的情况下将适当剂量的治疗药物智能地定位到身体的目标部位。为了实现TDD的预期目标，准确分析系统非常重要。分子通信（MC）的最新进展为使用工程概念和工具分析TDD过程提供了前景。具体而言，MC平台支持将TDD过程抽象为一种通信工程问题，其中可以使用通信工程工具分析人体中药物颗粒的注射和运输以及向特定组织或器官的输送。在本文中，我们站在MC平台上，提出了TDD系统的信息理论模型和分析。我们以直观的方式介绍了TDD系统的模块化结构和MC提取模块的概率模型。信息理论方法（例如互信息）的模拟结果用于分析TDD系统的性能。结果表明，药物注射/释放系统，纳米颗粒传播通道和纳米接收器系统中的不确定性会影响系统的相互信息，这与系统的生物等效性度量有关。