As we’ve noted many times, electrical tomography’s vast range of applications is by no means fixed and is in a state of constant expansion. Electrical tomography’s only limitation, it seems, is incuriosity or a lack of exigency on the part of industry, academia, or both.
A recently published paper documents a joint collaboration between the University of Bologna and GlaxoSmithKline’s Global Product Development team in Siena, where electrical resistance tomography (ERT) was assessed for its potential to monitor vaccine production in real-time.
The verdict? I think the title of the paper says it all: “Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) Proves a Reliable Process Analytical Technology for Real-Time Monitoring of Solid-Liquid Suspension and Deposition in Pharmaceutical Manufacturing.”
Aluminium-based adjuvants are an essential component in the manufacture and efficacy for a number of commonly administered vaccines including tetanus, meningitis, and whooping cough. Ensuring that aluminium-based adjuvants don’t sediment and are thoroughly mixed is a major challenge in the production of these vaccines.
Optical imaging techniques like particle image velocity (PIV) or high speed imaging are often compromised by vaccine opacity, in the former, or the inability to capture images in industrial scale vessels in the latter. Therefore, arriving at a monitoring solution that wasn’t optically based and, yet, was scalable to industrial manufacturing dimensions helped to inspire the present study to assess the viability of ERT to monitor vaccine production.
In addition to not suffering from the same limitations as optical imaging, ERT sensors are able to be manufactured hygienically to avoid compromising vaccine sterility, thereby avoiding the contaminating compromises that can result from other invasive sampling techniques.
Overall the study concluded that “[ERT] shows promise for pharmaceutical applications, especially in vaccine manufacturing…..”
The study can be accessed here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12247-025-10054-z?utm_source=rct_congratemailt&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=oa_20250725&utm_content=10.1007%2Fs12247-025-10054-z#Abs1
