Pharmacological challenge imaging has mapped, but not quantified, the sensitivity of a biological system to a given drug. We describe a novel method called quantitative pharmacodynamic imaging. This method combines pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling, repeated small doses of a challenge drug over a short time scale, and functional imaging to rapidly provide quantitative estimates of drug sensitivity including EC50 (the concentration of drug that produces half the maximum possible effect). We test the method with simulated data, assuming a typical sigmoidal dose-response curve and assuming imperfect imaging that includes artifactual baseline signal drift and random error. With these few assumptions, quantitative pharmacodynamic imaging reliably estimates EC50 from the simulated data, except when noise overwhelms the drug effect or when the effect occurs only at high doses. In preliminary fMRI studies of primate brain using a dopamine agonist, the observed noise level is modest compared with observed drug effects, and a quantitative EC50 can be obtained from some regional time-activity curves. Taken together, these results suggest that research and clinical applications for quantitative pharmacodynamic imaging are realistic.