Quantitative determination of bucindolol concentration in intact gel capsules using Raman spectroscopy

The ideal quality control method for pharmaceutical products should be capable of rapid nondestructive testing of intact tablets or capsules. Raman spectroscopy using near-infrared excitation is shown to be capable of obtaining useful spectral data directly from drug formulations in gel capsules and from the gel capsules inside blister packs. The Raman data collected from the capsules inside blister packs containing 0-100 mg of the active ingredient (bucindolol), when coupled with multivariate calibration, resulted in a calibration SEP of 3.36 mg. The largest source of error was found to be due to sample inhomogeneity. Even so, the method is shown to have significant potential as a rapid nondestructive quality control method for pharmaceutical samples.