Predicting and visualising the initial gel formation and swelling of matrices using advanced imaging

There is currently a high level of interest in continuous manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry with this process gradually replacing the traditional step-by-step manufacturing process in the majority of modern industries. Despite these advances, there are gaps and challenges that must be addressed to enable continuous manufacturing to be a viable approach in the pharmaceutical industry. To ensure the robustness of this process in regards to extended release formulations, it is greatly important to understand the swelling kinetics of tablet compacts as they give insights into the possible behavior of drug release in vivo. The development of a method that allows the swelling kinetics of various hydrophilic compacts to be studied and modelled would be of great importance to material and formulation scientists in both industry and academia. A proper understanding of this would also give greater insights that would allow quality by design formulations that may potentially drive down costs for industry thereby increasing the impact of this work. This project will use advanced imaging techniques such as dissolution imaging, X-ray micro-tomography and a Focus Variation (FV) optical surface metrology instrument from AliconaTM as a tool for validation, qualification and PAT testing in generating a mathematical predictive models.