A mean residence time (MRT) is an important pharmacokinetic parameter. To the author's knowledge, however, a physiologically based structure of MRT (thereafter MRT structure) has not been published so far. Primarily this is because MRT structures cannot be identified by traditional pharmacokinetic methods used for the determination of MRT. Therefore, tools from the theory of linear dynamic systems were used for the structural identification of MRT in this study. The MRT structure identified is physiologically meaningful. Accordingly, it seems that the MRT structure identified may contribute to already established knowledge about MRT.