Quality Control Procedure for Pipetting Systems

Our laboratory has developed a simple and rapid radionuclide procedure to make evaluations of the reproducibility of pipettes. Five semiautomatic and one automatic pipette were evaluated by delivering diluted 125I-human serum albumin aqueous or pooled serum samples. Each sample was counted in an autogamma counter. The results were statistically analyzed by calculating means, standard deviations, and coefficients of variation. The automatic pipette and one semiautomatic pipette demonstrated low coefficients of variation. All other pipettes evaluated showed inconsistency in the delivered volumes. The radionuclide method, as outlined in this study, can easily be incorporated as a quality control procedure for pipetting systems in any nuclear medicine laboratory.