Recent advancement of chemical imaging in pharmaceutical quality control: From final product testing to industrial utilization

Abstract

Chemical imaging (CI) possesses a strong ability of pharmaceutical analysis. Its great strength relies on the integration of traditional spectroscopy (one dimension) and imaging technique (two dimensions) to generate three-dimensional data hypercubes. Data pre-processing or processing methods are proposed to analyze vast data matrixes and thereby realizing different research objectives. In this review paper, various pharmaceutical applications of quality control over the past few years are summed up in two groups of final product test and industrial utilization. The scope of “quality control” here includes traditional analytical use, process understanding and manufactural control. Finally, two major challenges about undesirable sample geometry and lengthy acquisition time are discussed for prospective commercial or industrial application.