MassHighTech December 29, 2003

 

Therm gets injection of orders for spray pumps
By Dyke Hendrickson

The busy times for Image Therm Engineering are during the final weeks of December, but that is not just because part of the company’s business is focused on nasal spray pumps.

Customers are finishing their annual spending and are ordering with gusto.

“The fourth quarter is good for us,” said Dino Farina, founder of the Sudbury company. “That’s because they are spending what money they have left for the year. If they don’t spend it, they don’t get it back.

“We’re involved in testing spray products, such as nasal spray, but in this case our recent rush of business is because of budgets, not the common cold.”

Image Therm, founded in 1995, employs about eight.

The company has developed the SprayView, a system for characterizing and measuring dynamic behavior of pharmaceutical spray products, such as metered-dose inhalers, nasal spray pumps, dry powder inhalers and nebulizers.

Its clients include large pharmaceutical corporations that have developed spray medications.

Ergonomic engineering by the pharmaceutical companies is one characteristic that Image Therm Engineering checks with its monitoring technology. Another is to measure dosages: youngsters, for example, require a smaller dose than an adult taking the same medication.

In order to meet with FDA regulations regarding the consistency of emissions, Image Therm Engineering’s systems are often used to ensure proper dosages.

“The FDA is taking a closer look at products delivered via a spray mechanism,” Farina said.

“Federal officials are aware of the different dosages that one can receive, so many of our customers are those working with the FDA.”

SprayView combines a patent-pending optomechanical design with high-speed digital imaging and Windows-based software to deliver frame-by- frame visualization and detailed analysis of in-flight spray particles at up to 1,000 frames per second.

SprayView uses a laser light sheet to illuminate a nonintrusive plane of spray droplets or particles at any orientation relative to the spray. This unique approach enables SprayView to be used for both plume geometry and spray-pattern measurements.

The system’s software performs automatic hardware verification, force transducer calibration and pump stroke characterization. Users can define, store, recall, test and execute actuation methods with variable velocity and acceleration profiles.

The system automatically records and displays real-time force and stroke position data of a spray.

The design of the SprayView NSx allows the system to exceed the current FDA protocols for nasal spray drug products.

Company officials say SprayView can reduce overall laboratory testing time to less than 1/20th of that of plate and freeze-frame photography methods. The company says this system enables faster product time to market with improved quality control and regulatory compliance.

A full system costs about $150,000, company officials say.

The company is developing hardware for other physical needs. Image Therm is profitable and is looking for collaborations and/or acquisitions. Company officials say that revenues for 2002 were $1.8 million, of which $300,000 was profit.