A new criterion to assess distributional homogeneity in hyperspectral images of solid pharmaceutical dosage forms

•DHI has been developed to assess distributional homogeneity in hyperspectral maps.•This criterion has been tested with simulated maps of different homogeneity.•A linear relationship is observed between homogeneity and DHI value.•DHI methodology has been applied on real samples.•A linear relationship is observed between DHI and content uniformity values.

During galenic formulation development, homogeneity of distribution is a critical parameter to check since it may influence activity and safety of the drug. Raman hyperspectral imaging is a technique of choice for assessing the distributional homogeneity of compounds of interest. Indeed, the combination of both spectroscopic and spatial information provides a detailed knowledge of chemical composition and component distribution.Actually, most authors assess homogeneity using parameters of the histogram of intensities (e.g. mean, skewness and kurtosis). However, this approach does not take into account spatial information and loses the main advantage of imaging. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new criterion: Distributional Homogeneity Index (DHI). DHI has been tested on simulated maps and formulation development samples. The distribution maps of the samples were obtained without validated calibration model since different formulations were under investigation. The results obtained showed a linear relationship between content uniformity values and DHI values of distribution maps. Therefore, DHI methodology appears to be a suitable tool for the analysis of homogeneity of distribution maps even without calibration during formulation development.

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