Spatial distribution of soluble insulin in pig subcutaneous tissue: Effect of needle length, injection speed and injected volume

Abstract The spatial distribution of a soluble insulin formulation was visualized and quantified in 3-dimensions using X-ray computed tomography. The drug distribution was visualized for ex vivo injections in pig subcutaneous tissue. Pig subcutaneous tissue has very distinct layers, which could be separated in the tomographic reconstructions and the amount of drug in each tissue class was quantified. With a scan time of about 45 min per sample, and a robust segmentation it was possible to analyze differences in the spatial drug distribution between several similar injections. It was studied how the drug distribution was effected by needle length, injection speed and injected volume. For an injected volume of 0.1 ml and injection depth of 8 mm about 50% of the injections were partly intramuscular. Using a 5 mm needle resulted in purely subcutaneous injections with minor differences in the spatial drug distribution between injections. Increasing the injected volume from 0.1 ml to 1 ml did not increase the intramuscular volume fraction, but gave a significantly higher volume fraction placed in the fascia separating the deep and superficial subcutaneous fat layers. Varying the injection speed from 25 l/s up to 300 l/s gave no changes in the drug concentration distribution. The method presented gives novel insight into subcutaneous injections of soluble insulin drugs and can be used to optimize the injection technique for subcutaneous drug administration in preclinical studies of rodents.