Hyperspectral imaging technology for pharmaceutical analysis

The sensitivity and spatial resolution of hyperspectral imaging instruments are tested in this paper using pharmaceutical applications. The first experiment tested the hypothesis that a near-IR tunable diode-based remote sensing system is capable of monitoring degradation of hard gelatin capsules at a relatively long distance (0.5 kilometer). Spectra from the capsules were used to differentiate among capsules exposed to an atmosphere containing 150 ppb formaldehyde for 0, 2, 4, and 8 hrs. The second experiment tested the hypothesis that near-infrared (IR) imaging spectrometry of tablets permits the identification and composition of multiple individual tablets to be determined simultaneously. A near-IR camera was used to collect thousands of spectra simultaneously from a field of blister-packaged tablets. The number of tablets that a typical near-IR camera can currently analyze simultaneously was estimated to be approximately 1300. The bootstrap error-adjusted single-sample technique chemometric-imaging algorithm was used to draw probability-density contour plots that revealed tablet composition. The single-capsule analysis provides an indication of how far apart the sample and instrumentation can be and still maintain adequate S/N, while the multiple-sample imaging experiment gives an indication of how many samples can be analyzed simultaneously while maintaining an adequate S/N and pixel coverage on each sample.