DETERMINATION OF TABLET COATING DISTRIBUTION BY DECONVOLUTION OF UNCOATED AND COATED TABLET WEIGHT DISTRIBUTIONS

Purpose. The purpose of this research is to obtain the tablet coating distribution from weight distributions of uncoated and coated tablets. Methods. The method of deconvolution with digital smoothing was used to calculate the distribution of coating applied to a tablet populatio n from separate random measurements of individual uncoated and coated tablets. Results. It was demonstrated that the calculated coating weig ht distribution agrees well with the measured distribution. The effect of the smoothing factor on the solution is illustrated. Conclusions. This method can be used during development to facilitate process scale -up/optimization. In routine production, the method can assess the rep roducibility and consistency of a coating process.