External characteristics of unsteady spray atomization from a nasal spray device.

The nasal route presents an enormous opportunity to exploit the highly vascularized respiratory airway for systemic drug delivery to provide more rapid onset of therapy and reduced drug degradation compared with conventional oral routes. The dynamics of atomization at low injection pressure is less known as typical spray atomization studies have focused on industrial applications such as fuel injection that are performed at much higher pressure. An experimental test station was designed in house and an alternative method to characterize the external spray is presented. This involved the use of high-speed camera to capture the temporal development of the spray as it is atomized through actuation of the spray device. An image-processing technique based on edge detection was developed to automate processing through the large number of images captured. The results showed that there are three main phases of spray development (prestable, stable, and poststable) that can be correlated by examining the spray width. A comparison with a human nasal cavity is made to put into perspective the dimensions and geometry that the spray atomization produces. This study aimed to extend the current existing set of data to contribute toward a better understanding in nasal spray drug delivery.