<p>Model parameters and terminology.</p>

However, standard antibiotic susceptibility metrics (e.g., MIC) and textbook models neglect transient dynamics and density-dependent effects, despite their ubiquity in nature. In clinical infections, where bacterial populations are the units we treat, this can increase the risk of under treatment.

To address this gap, we generate high resolution optical density time series data for <i>Pseudomonas aeruginosa</i> (3 antibiotics, 12 doses, 7 inoculum sizes, 4x replication), enabling gradient estimation and gradient-based model parameterization. We develop a dynamics-led computational pipeline that (1) evaluates population scale ordinary differential equation models in the context of estimated time derivative data, and (2) classifies transient dynamics in dose-inoculum space using unsupervised clustering.