Characteristic limits in radioactivity measurement. From Currie's definition to the international standard ISO-11929 publication

Different approaches are found in the literature to compute the characteristics limits used to decide whether an activity measurement result for a radionuclide is significantly above the background level for the analyte in the sample. Comparing the different working expressions of the characteristic limits (critical level and detection limit) that can be used by any measurement laboratory; this paper shows that they are similar under the routine conditions of a majority of radioactivity measurement laboratories. (author)