Although knowing the true extent of systemic absorption (referred to as absolute bioavailability) is clearly useful, in practice it is not determined as frequently as one may think. The reason for this is that its assessment requires an intravenous reference, that is, a route of administration that guarantees that all of the administered drug reaches the systemic circulation. Such studies come at considerable cost, not least of which is the necessity to conduct preclinical toxicity tests to ensure adequate safety, as well as there being potential problems due to solubility limitations. These limitations may be overcome, however, by administering a very low dose (typically a few micrograms) of an isotopically labelled drug concomitantly with a therapeutic non-labelled oral dose. Providing the isotopically-labelled intravenous dose is sufficiently low so as not to perturb the systemic drug concentrations achieved from the absorbed oral dose, then the intravenous and oral pharmacokinetics can be deconvoluted by virtue of the their different isotopic constitution and thereby determine the oral and intravenous pharmacokinetics from the same dose administration. This technique eliminates pharmacokinetic issues on non-equivalent clearance as well as enabling the intravenous dose to be administered with a minimum of toxicology and formulation. The technique was first applied using stable-isotopes such as C-13 and mass-spectrometry to distinguish the isotopes by mass difference. More recently, C-14 labelled drugs are administered intravenously and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) used to measure the isotopically labelled drug along with mass spectrometry for the unlabelled drug.