TY - JOUR

T1 - Image-based artificial intelligence methods for product control of tablet coating quality

AU - Hirschberg, Cosima

AU - Edinger, Magnus

AU - Holmfred, Else

AU - Rantanen, Jukka

AU - Boetker, Johan

N1 - Funding Information: Funding: This study was funded by Innovation Fund Denmark; Project: High Quality Dry Products with Superior Functionality and Stability-Q-Dry; File No: 5150-00024B. Publisher Copyright: © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - Mimicking the human decision-making process is challenging. Especially, many process control situations during the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals are based on visual observations and related experience-based actions. The aim of the present work was to investigate the use of image analysis to classify the quality of coated tablets. Tablets with an increasing amount of coating solution were imaged by fast scanning using a conventional office scanner. A segmentation routine was implemented to the images, allowing the extraction of numeric image-based information from individual tablets. The image preprocessing was performed prior to utilization of four different classification techniques for the individual tablet images. The support vector machine (SVM) technique performed superior compared to a convolutional neural network (CNN) in relation to computational time, and this approach was also slightly better at classifying the tablets correctly. The fastest multivariate method was partial least squares (PLS) regression, but this method was hampered by the inferior classification accuracy of the tablets. Finally, it was possible to create a numerical threshold classification model with an accuracy comparable to the SVM approach, so it is evident that there exist multiple valid options for classifying coated tablets.

AB - Mimicking the human decision-making process is challenging. Especially, many process control situations during the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals are based on visual observations and related experience-based actions. The aim of the present work was to investigate the use of image analysis to classify the quality of coated tablets. Tablets with an increasing amount of coating solution were imaged by fast scanning using a conventional office scanner. A segmentation routine was implemented to the images, allowing the extraction of numeric image-based information from individual tablets. The image preprocessing was performed prior to utilization of four different classification techniques for the individual tablet images. The support vector machine (SVM) technique performed superior compared to a convolutional neural network (CNN) in relation to computational time, and this approach was also slightly better at classifying the tablets correctly. The fastest multivariate method was partial least squares (PLS) regression, but this method was hampered by the inferior classification accuracy of the tablets. Finally, it was possible to create a numerical threshold classification model with an accuracy comparable to the SVM approach, so it is evident that there exist multiple valid options for classifying coated tablets.

KW - Artificial intelligence

KW - Image analysis

KW - In silico modelling

KW - Multivariate analysis

KW - Neural networks

U2 - 10.3390/pharmaceutics12090877

DO - 10.3390/pharmaceutics12090877

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 32942536

VL - 12

JO - Pharmaceutics

JF - Pharmaceutics

SN - 1999-4923

IS - 9

M1 - 877

ER -