Principles, execution, evaluation and quality control of radioligand investigations

A review on the principles and technical aspects of different methods in which radioactive ligands are applied is presented. In the first part the principles of the radioimmunoassay, the competitive protein binding assay, the immunoradiometric assay, and the radioreceptor assay are summarized. The second part provides detailed information on the fulfilment of radioimmunoassays. The following steps are discussed: compositon of the incubation mixture, conditions of incubation, separation procedures, counting of radioactivity, manual and computerized evaluation of the data, intraassay and interassay quality control. (L.E.)