Hot Stage Microscopy

This technique focuses on thermal responses such as melting point, crystallization onset, and degradation, offering direct insight into stability and formulation behavior. Understanding these parameters helps predict shelf life and processing performance for pharmaceutical ingredients.

Hot-stage microscopy is commonly used to evaluate the stability of drugs and optimize formulations for heat-sensitive compounds. It identifies how active ingredients or excipients behave at elevated temperatures, helping researchers select materials that remain stable during manufacturing, storage, and application.

This method is also crucial in examining compatibility between formulation components, supporting decisions that affect product safety, efficacy, and performance.

In drug development, hot-stage microscopy helps flag thermal behaviors that could impact product quality. By revealing instability, polymorphic transitions, or decomposition patterns, it enables teams to refine formulations early, thereby reducing delays during the regulatory testing and approval stages.

The ability to visually confirm thermal events reduces guesswork and supports confident, data-driven formulation decisions.

The process involves placing a sample on a heated or cooled stage while observing it through a microscope. Researchers monitor changes as the temperature is gradually ramped. This setup is frequently used alongside differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to validate findings.

ImageProVision offers a comprehensive system that combines a hot-stage with a microscope and image analysis tools. This setup enables the identification of active pharmaceutical ingredient particles in mixtures or disintegrated tablets, and captures changes related to temperature and time.