Advantages and Limits of Weighing Pharmaceutical Gelatin Capsules with Dual Energy X-ray Transmission

Quality control is an important step during the manufacturing of products and of crucial interest in the field of pharmaceuticals. These products need to be clean, in a stable condition and efficient. Pharmaceutical capsules should not contain any foreign items, be precisely filled and in an immaculate state. Unfortunately, the weight of the capsule shells alone can vary due to production variations. Given that mainly the filled capsules are weighed to check the correct filling, the amount of filling itself may vary and lead to unwanted side effects or decreasing effectiveness. Dual energy X-ray transmission may be a powerful tool in non-destructive testing and can be used for weighing materials. In this approach, five types of dietary supplements in pharmaceutical gelatin capsules with varying weight were examined and weighed to determine the limitation and advantages of this method. The samples were investigated in movement both in their blister packaging and without.