Quantification of an active ingredient in tablets by NIR transmission measurements

For the quality control of tablets several parameters have to be checked. The most important one is the content of an active ingredient which has to match a narrow range around the designated content. The only useful measurement mode is transmission which provides information of the complete tablet. A measurement in diffuse reflectance would register only the surface which is useless especially in case of a coated tablet. In this work tablets for a clinical study (placebo/verum studies) with very low concentrations of the active ingredient were measured. The concentration range was 0 to 6 mg with a total weight of the tablets of 105 mg, leading to a highest concentration of the active component of 5.7% by weight. Especially the spectroscopic distinction between the placebo and the low dosage forms with 0.25 and 0.5 mg active agent requires an extraordinarily accurate sampling technique. Using the VECTOR 22/N-T in transmission mode allows the collection of the information from the complete tablets. A quantitative PLS-model with transmission spectra from the tablets described above shows that the active substance can be predicted with a RMSECV (root mean square error of cross validation) of 0.04% absolute for this special application. The results are compared with those of measurements in diffuse reflectance using different accessories.