Comparison of international standards concerning the capability of detection for analytical methods

The international standard ISO 11843 specifies the experimental conditions for the estimation of critical values of analytical methods referring to the capability of detection. The present paper aimed at a formal comparison of the ISO 11843 standard with the German standard DIN 32645 and the Commission Decision 2002/657/EC of the EU. In this context the particular scope of each standard is discussed based on a numerical example given in the DIN standard. For practitioners a better understanding of the different guidelines based on the same basics, i.e. the statistical theory of hypothesis testing and the probabilities of false positives α and false negatives β, is to be achieved.