Influence of the procedure used to prepare the calibration sample set on the performance of near infrared spectroscopy in quantitative pharmaceutical analyses

Calibrating near infrared diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) methods usually involves preparing a set of samples with a view to expanding the analyte concentration range spanned by production samples. In this work, the performances of the two procedures most frequently used for this purpose in near infrared pharmaceutical analysis, viz., synthetic samples obtained by weighing of the pure constituents of the pharmaceutical and doped samples made by under- or overdosing previously powdered production samples, were compared. Both procedures were found to provide similar results in the quantification of the active compound in the pharmaceutical, which was determined with a relative standard error of prediction (RSEP) of <1.6%. However, the two types of sample preparation provide different spectra, which precludes the accurate quantification of synthetic samples from calibrations obtained with doped samples and vice versa. None of the mathematical pre-treatments tested with a view to reducing this different scattering (viz., second derivative, standard normal variate and orthogonal signal correction) could effectively solve this problem. This hinders accurate validation of the linearity of the procedure and makes it advisable to use doped samples which are markedly less different to production samples.