Setting Meaningful Detection and Quantitation Limits for Chromatography Methods

When reporting or using results of quantitative analysis, it is important to understand the uncertainties associated with the reported values. Every method, no matter how good, has limitations that create some degree of measurement error, which can be manifested as inaccuracy, imprecision, or a combination of these. Relative measurement error tends to increase as analyte concentrations decrease, because analyte responses decrease in relation to background signals. At very low concentrations, analyte signals become difficult to distinguish from background signals, resulting in high rates of false positives (reporting a detection when no analyte is present) and false negatives (reporting no detection when the analyte is present).