FAULT DISTINGUISHABILITY OF COMPARTMENTAL SYSTEMS.

This paper considers the problem of diagnosis in compartmental systems. Rate constants of any compartmental system are considered to reflect visceral function and therefore take abnormal values when the living body is in disorder. The problem is to decide the set of abnormal rate constants from the output of the system, and to distinguish failure (disease) parameters. It is shown that an abnormal output is contained in a certain subset corresponding to any failure. This leads to a distinguishability condition which can be checked through graphical examination. Examples are shown to illustrate how the proposed fault diagnosis algorithm can be applied.