The current standard for studying the dissolution of an oral tablet is an experimental setup called the U.S. Pharmacopia (USP) apparatus. The tablet is put in a cylinder and the paddle blade is rotated to measure how much drug dissolves in a given time. However, this doesn’t mimic the flow inside the stomach well enough. The actual flow velocities, pressure and shear stresses that a pill experiences inside our stomach is very different from these experiments. So, we developed a computational model to study drug dissolution inside the stomach. Using MRI imaging data we constructed the actual geometry and the motion of the stomach walls. The model was used to quantify the effect of body posture and stomach disorders on the rate of drug dissolution.
The published paper can be found at: https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0096877
Jae Ho Lee, Sharun Kuhar, Jung Hee Seo, Pankaj Jay Pasricha, Rajat Mittal. Computational modeling of drug dissolution in human stomach: effects of posture and gastroparesis on drug bioavailability. Physics of Fluids. 2022 Jun 24.