Surface and bulk properties of flat-faced starch acetate tablets were studied. For surface quality inspection optical coherence tomography and recently developed diffractive glossmeter were utilized. Both these optical devices together provide local information on surface roughness and gloss of a tablet over a measured area. The concepts of mean topography and mean gloss profile for surface quality of a tablet are introduced. It was observed that the surface quality of the tablet varies, and compression at high pressure may not guarantee a good surface quality of the tablet. Using novel statistical parameters for gloss and relevant surface roughness parameter, it is possible to get more comprehensive quantitative data on the surface condition of a tablet. THz spectrometer was utilized for detection of THz pulse delay in transmission measurement mode from the tablets. The delay time and thickness ratio of the tablet are consistent with the porosity of the tablet as a function of compression pressure. We suggest that the multimeasurement scheme using three different devices helps tablet makers to better assess bulk and surface quality of their products.

The terahertz measurement technique has become popular in the field of pharmaceutical technology for tablet quality inspection. Spectral data obtained from the tablets is based on the utilization of Fresnel's formulas for an ideal slab. However, a tablet is a porous medium. Hence, in the THz gap one has to assume that a tablet constitutes at least an effective medium if the Fresnel theory is applied in quantitative permittivity spectra analysis. Hence, it is suggested that one should consider instead of the permittivity of homogeneous media the concept of effective permittivity in the THz terminology of porous tablets. Usually the fill factor of a component of a tablet is known but not the detailed bulk structure. Nevertheless, it is possible to estimate the complex effective permittivity of a tablet with the aid of so-called Wiener bounds. The idea of this article is to present a modification of Wiener bounds applied to the estimation of the real and imaginary part of the permittivity of the pure component of a tablet. As an example, the effective complex permittivity of a starch acetate tablet is considered.

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