We have developed a systematic procedure to study the disks in Algol-type binaries using spectroscopic analysis , synthetic spectra , and tomography .
We analyzed 119 H \alpha spectra of TT Hya , an Algol-type eclipsing interacting binary , collected from 1985-2001 .
The new radial velocities enabled us to derive reliable orbital elements , including a small non-zero eccentricity , and to improve the accuracy of the absolute dimensions of the system .
High resolution IUE spectra were also analyzed to study the formation of the ultraviolet lines and continuum .
Synthetic spectra of the iron curtain using our new shellspec program enabled us to derive a characteristic disk temperature of 7000K .
We have demonstrated that the UV emission lines seen during total primary eclipse can not originate from the accretion disk , but most likely arise from a hotter disk-stream interaction region .

The synthetic spectra of the stars , disk , and stream allowed us to derive a mass transfer rate \geq 2 \times 10 ^ { -10 } M _ { \odot } yr ^ { -1 } .
Doppler tomography of the observed H \alpha profiles revealed a distinct accretion disk .
The difference spectra produced by subtracting the synthetic spectra of the stars resulted in an image of the disk , which virtually disappeared once the composite synthetic spectra of the stars and disk were used to calculate the difference spectra .
An intensity enhancement of the resulting tomogram revealed images of the gas stream and an emission arc .
We successfully modeled the gas stream using shellspec and associated the emission arc with an asymmetry in the accretion disk .