Patent ID: 11900025
Assignee: MERCK SHARP & DOHME LLC
Field: Medical technology (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 14:
15. A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions for estimating a release profile of a device for releasing a compound, the instructions, when executed by a computing system, causing the computing system to perform operations including:
receiving an x-ray computed tomography (XRCT) image of the device, the device comprising particles of the compound embedded in a plurality of pores in a matrix;
generating an unlabeled mask from the XRCT image, the unlabeled mask identifying pores and necks connecting a set of the pores;
performing an erosion process on the unlabeled mask to generate an eroded mask, the erosion process eroding the pores and removing the necks connecting the set of the pores resulting in disconnected pores;
labeling the disconnected pores in the eroded mask;
performing a dilation process on the eroded mask to generate a dilated mask, the dilation process enlarging the labeled pores that were previously eroded and unlabeled;
extracting, from the dilated mask, a set of features including pore volumes and connectivities for the labeled pores;
retrieving a minimalistic model for estimating the release profile of the device based on the pore volume and connectivity, wherein the minimalistic model determines a correlation between a release coefficient for a Higuchi-type release and an XRCT parameter, wherein the XRCT parameter is based on the pore volumes and connectivities;
and estimating the release profile of the device based on the correlation determined using the retrieved minimalistic model and the pore volumes and connectivities.