An overview of qualimetric strategies for optimisation and calibration in pharmaceutical analysis using flow injection techniques

Flow Injection analysis represents an attractive tool because of its great advantages, such as versatility, speed, high sampling rate and wide applicability in the field of pharmaceutical analysis. However, due to the inherent characteristics of the technique, the choice of the best set of operational and chemical conditions is complicated and the conventional univariate optimisation method present some limitations, mainly due to fact that the interdependence of variables is not considered. In relation to the calibration process, because of the transient character of the signals obtained using FIA manifolds coupled with different detection techniques, different strategies can be used in calibration to solve some problems related to the nature of the signal thereby improving the performance characteristics of the method. This paper offers an overview of different methodologies used in optimisation based on the use of statistically designed experiments and some strategies developed for calibration applied to the analysis of pharmaceuticals.