Noncompartmental Analysis (R Track)
A computational, audit-minded workflow for running NCA in R: structure → compute → diagnose → report
Welcome
Noncompartmental Analysis (R Track) is a hands-on module for clinical pharmacologists, pharmacometricians, and quantitative scientists who need to run NCA in a way that is fast, reproducible, and defensible.
The focus isn’t just how to compute AUC — it’s how to run NCA like an audit-minded PMx scientist:
- define what a “profile” is (and what breaks it)
- choose intervals intentionally (0–T, 0–tau, 0–inf, partial AUC windows)
- compute exposure metrics with transparent assumptions
- diagnose reliability so results are trustworthy
- produce clean tables and figures you can drop into a report
Get Access
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Who this module is for
- Clinical pharmacologists running exposure summaries in early studies
- Pharmacometrics scientists who need defensible NCA workflows
- Analysts producing report-ready AUC/Cmax/Tmax tables
- Scientists who want to stop “click-and-export” NCA and make it reproducible
- Anyone who has ever wondered: “Are these NCA results actually valid?”
Learning objectives
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
- Explain what NCA is (and isn’t) within PMx workflows
- Define what counts as one PK profile (ID + occasion/analyte/matrix when needed)
- Build
PKNCAconc(),PKNCAdose(), andPKNCAdata()objects correctly - Define exposure intervals deliberately (partial AUC windows, AUC over tau, AUCinf)
- Run
pk.nca()and extract results into clean, report-ready tables - Diagnose reliability using practical checks (extrapolated fraction, half-life sanity checks, visual QC)
- Handle BLQ and missingness transparently and consistently
- Spot the common structural failure modes that silently break NCA
Course structure
This module is organized as a repeatable workflow you can reuse on any study:
- Structure → define profiles, validate uniqueness, confirm units and sorting
- Compute → build PKNCA objects, define intervals, run
pk.nca()
- Diagnose → reliability checks (terminal phase, AUCinf extrapolation, visual QC)
- Report → clean summary tables + reproducible plots for communication
After the final lesson, you’ll reach a Course Completion page where you can confirm completion and generate your certificate.
Tools used
- R (≥ 4.2 recommended)
- RStudio or Positron
- tidyverse
- PKNCA
Get started
Begin with NCA Foundations and complete the structural QC checklist before computing any exposure metrics.