But last March the agency said more data would be needed.
How much data would be needed to either restrict use of a chemical or mandate an outright ban is still unclear.
The regulatory guidelines would indicate how the drug rules would be interpreted for transgenic animals, and what types of data would be needed to prove safety and efficacy.
He said the company hoped to meet with the F.D.A. to see what data would be needed for the drug's approval.
A day earlier, Amylin had received a letter from the F.D.A. saying more data would be needed before its diabetes drug, Symlin, could be approved.
Engineers calculate that 4,000 lines of data would be needed to reproduce all the visual information in a frame of film -- exactly as many lines as the Imagica delivers.
The F.D.A. rejected Novartis's application last year, saying that more data would be needed on the drug's effectiveness, according to Jörg Reinhardt, head of pharmaceutical development for the company.
P. Noel Barrett, vice president for research and development in Baxter's bioscience division, said the company was in discussions with the Food and Drug Administration about what kind of data would be needed for approval.
But a spokeswoman for the board, Candis Cohen, said that while it could investigate individual patients' cases cited in a complaint, it was "not equipped" to evaluate a doctor's overall performance in fields like mammography, where extensive data would be needed to establish a pattern of incompetence.
Although starting points for action could be identified, more in-depth analysis and integration of quantitative data would be needed to provide more evidence.
More sophisticated risk assessment methods, using probabilistic models to study variability in pesticide residue levels and food consumption data, would be needed to achieve this task.
