Performance evaluation of automated immunoassays on the Technicon Immuno 1 system

We performed an immunoassay evaluation for various analytes on a fully automated random-access analyzer, the Technicon Immuno 1 system from Bayer Corp. This system involves latex agglutination, magnetic separation sandwich, and magnetic separation competitive immunoassay configurations. The evaluated analytes were thyrotropin (TSH), triiodothyronine, thyroxine, free thyroxine, follitropin, lutropin, prolactin, beta subunit of human chorionic gonadotropin, cortisol, ferritin, alpha-fetoprotein, carcinoembryonic antigen, and prostate-specific antigen. We tested the assay precision, linearity, and correlation with comparison methods for these analytes. The functional sensitivity of the TSH assay and the sample-to-sample carryover were also studied. Excellent results were obtained for within-run and between-day precision studies, with most assays showing within-run CVs <4% and between-day CVs <6%. The linearity for all assays was acceptable and the correlation between Immuno 1 assays and comparison methods showed satisfactory results. The functional sensitivity of the TSH assay was estimated at 0.04 mU/L. No sample-to-sample carryover was detected.