Characterization of digital camera-based UV illumination fluorescent imaging for concentration measurement with limit of detection, specificity and precision

Abstract

Nowadays the increased need for pharmaceutics requires fast, cheap and reliable quality control systems to investigate the final product’s quality. The generally used methods like high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and other coupled techniques are not just time-consuming but also expensive and often destructive. To facilitate real-time measurement of active ingredient concentration, an alternative non-destructive machine vision and artificial intelligence-based system was tested, that implements ultraviolet (UV) illumination. With this technique the concentration of the active pharmaceutical ingredient containing fluorophore groups can be studied due to the different light emission of the different active pharmaceutical ingredient concentrations. However, to facilitate the practical application of this novel non-destructive and system, it is essential to determine its limit of detection (LoD) and limit of quantification (LoQ). In this study we aimed to study the LoD and LoQ of UV illumination fluorescent imaging of tablets using levofloxacin as the active pharmaceutical ingredient. We also execute intermediate precision and specificity studies to gather more information about the reliability of this novel technique.