FTIR Imaging as a Unique Tool in the Characterization of Biomaterials

Conventional FTIR microscopy has been around for many years and proven to be a valuable research tool, yet it has limitations due to its limited spatial resolution and long acquisition times. Since first being developed a little more than a decade ago, FTIR microscopes utilizing a focal plane array (FPA) detector have become the start-of-the-art in FTIR imaging. Since its development, FTIR imaging has been utilized in a wide variety of applications, where it is advantageous to acquire chemical information with microscale resolution. For example, it has been applied for high-throughput analysis of the material properties of pharmaceutical formulations and other biomaterials, and several other researchers have utilized FTIR imaging to examine the drug release processes.