Radiochromatography in pharmaceutical and biomedical analysis.

Recent advances in the chromatographic analysis of radiolabelled compounds are discussed, with emphasis on the optimization of radioactivity detection in modern chromatographic techniques. Applications are mentioned only infrequently. The state-of-the-art of common radioactivity detection methods is reviewed, as well as promising new detection principles. The latter include flow-through liquid scintillation counting of reversed-phase column eluates based on post-column extraction and solvent segmentation, flow-through heterogeneous counting using a flow cell constructed from axially aligned scintillation fibres, flow cells especially constructed for the detection of beta-emitting radioisotopes in capillary zone electrophoresis, position-sensitive analysers employed in radio planar chromatography and, finally 14C atom counting (as opposed to 14C decay counting) by accelerator mass spectrometry.