SURFACE ROUGHNESS QUANTIFICATION OF PHARMACEUTICAL, HERBAL, NUTRITIONAL DOSAGE FORMS AND COSMETIC PREPARATIONS

摘要

Dosage forms are identified based on a comparison of surface roughness parameters. One or more of the following surface roughness parameters are measured: 1) mean peak to valley height (Rz);2) geometric average height from a mean line (Rq);3) maximum profile peak height (Rp);4) roughness depth (Rt);5) and arithmetic mean roughness (Ra). The surface roughness parameters of a first dosage form are determined and compared to the surface roughness parameters of a second dosage form. This method provides a way of "fingerprinting" dosage forms to help identify adulterated and misbranded drugs. In addition, a variety of characteristics relating to composition and process for making the dosage form may be determined by the quantitative method.