Sensitive determination of specific radioactivity of positron emission tomography radiopharmaceuticals by radio high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

A sensitive quality control method is often required in positron emission tomography (PET) radiopharmaceutical analysis due to the high specific radioactivity of synthetic products. The applicability of a radio high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with fluorescence detection was evaluated for a wide variety of PET radiopharmaceuticals. In 29 different radiopharmaceuticals studied, 20 compounds exhibited native fluorescence. These properties enabled sensitive determination of their chemical masses by direct fluorimetric detection after separation by HPLC. For some substances, detection limits were below nanograms per milliliter level, at least 40 times better than current UV absorbance detection. Sufficient reproducibility and linearity were obtained for the analysis of pharmaceutical fluid. Post-column fluorimetric derivatization was also established for the quantitative determination of FDG and ClDG in [(18)F]FDG samples. These methods could be applied successfully to the analysis of PET radiopharmaceuticals with ultra-high specific radioactivity.