Biomedical engineering

Materials science

Chromatography

Distribution (mathematics)

Particle size

Drug

Pharmaceutical formulation

Geology

Oceanography

Physical chemistry

Drug delivery

Physics

Nanotechnology

Mathematics

Optics

Synchrotron

Pharmacology

Mathematical analysis

Particle (ecology)

Composite material

Quality by Design

Medicine

Chemistry

Granulation

International Journal of Pharmaceutics

Uniform drug distribution within fast disintegrating tablets is a key quality measure to ensure a reliable, steady, and targeted release of the contained active pharmaceutical ingredients. In this work, the drug particle distribution in mini-tablets was studied with synchrotron phase contrast X-ray microtomography. Mini-tablets had a weight of 9.5 mg and a drug load from 2.5% to 20%. Moxidectin, a drug used for treatment of parasitic infections, was used as a model compound. Drug content covered a range from 91% to 121% of the target dose. A linear iterative clustering (SLIC) superpixel method was used for segmentation, analysis, and visualization of the spatial distribution of individual tablet components (i.e., pores, excipients, and drug). Results show that the drug was not uniformly distributed within the tablet, revealing an increasing drug load towards the tablets' outer boundaries and thus indicative of a radial displacement of drug particles during compaction. The presented method can be used for the quantitative analysis of drug content and drug distribution within pharmaceutical tablets, allowing for the optimization of fast disintegrating formulations. The results also affirm that that drug loads up to 20% will not lead to segregation for moxidectin.

Study of drug particle distributions within mini-tablets using synchrotron X-ray microtomography and superpixel image clustering