To determine the optimum conditions for the in vitro radiolabelling of human granulocytes with 111In-tropolonate for clinical studies, the factors which affected the amount of 111In bound to the cells, the labelling efficiency (LE), were measured. These included the tropolone concentration, labelling medium and cell concentration. The tropolone concentration was dependent on the amount of plasma in the labelling medium; with 90% ACD plasma it was 4 x 10(-4) M and with Hepes saline buffer it was 4 x 10(-5) M. Using these tropolone concentrations and a low granulocyte concentration of 1 x 10(7) ml-1, the LE in 90% ACD plasma was 29% and in buffer was 74%. However, increasing the cell concentration to 1 x 10(8) ml-1 gave a LE of 90% in buffer and plasma. The optimum conditions for clinical studies involved incubating granulocytes, or mixed leucocytes as a source of granulocytes, at a cell concentration of at least 5 x 10(7) cell/ml in 1 ml ACD plasma, pH 7-7.6 with 0.1 ml tropolone at 4.4 x 10(-3) M mixed with no more than 100 microliter 111InCl3 for 15 min at room temperature. Under these conditions more than 96% of the 111In was taken up by the granulocytes and only 3% of the 111In was released from the labelled cells during a 30 min incubation in plasma. 111In-tropolonate is therefore an efficient agent for stably radiolabelling human granulocytes in plasma for clinical studies.