Abstract
Recent advocacy of the term “radioautography” (Nagata 1996) is a rerun of earlier discussions about terminology (Preuss 1957; Joftes and Warren 1956; Boyd 1955; Tauxe et al. 1954). The vast majority of authors of books and research papers, past and present, have applied the term “autoradiography” (see also Stumpf and Solomon 1995). A preference for “autoradiography” has persisted, despite policies of certain institutions and journals requiring textual changes from “autoradiography” to “radioautography” in submissions. The Index Medicus of the US National Library of Medicine advocated “radioautography” as the official term between 1963 and 1972, but this was changed to “autoradiography” (Medical Subject Heading) in 1973. Since 1973, “autoradiography” has been the official term in MEDLINE searches.
Etymological arguments have been made for “autoradiography” to designate the methodology and “autoradiogram” to designate the pictorial record. Since the Greek word “auto” acts as a prefix, it is usually not found in the middle of a word. In addition, the process does not produce an “autograph” but rather a “radiograph,” as a form of “self-ray writing.” An additional argument against “radioautography” is constituted by the four vowels—i,o,a,u,—occurring together; because of possible enunciation and phonetic difficulties this should be avoided (Boyd 1955; Tauxe et al. 1954).
Discussions in the literature give the impression that neither of the two Latin-Greek or Greek-Latin-Greek hybrids, “radioautography” and “autoradiography,” satisfies all aspects of terminology regarding purist linguistic demands and concise designation of the various applications. Continued disputes about semantics, therefore, are likely to remain unproductive. To avoid confusion, however, it would be prudent to settle for one term. The points made above support the recent decision by the editor of the Journal of Histochemistry and Cytochemistry to favor the term “autoradiography” for techniques that utilize radioactive label in conjunction with sensitive detection media to obtain function- and time-related topographical information. “Autoradiography” designates a variety of histochemical techniques that are well-suited for the localization, characterization, and quantification of bioactive substances in specific tissues and cells (e.g., Stumpf 1995; Stumpf and Solomon 1995).