UV spectrophotometric simultaneous determination of cefoperazone and sulbactam in pharmaceutical formulations by derivative, Fourier and wavelet transforms.

Signal processing methods based on the use of derivative, Fourier and wavelet transforms were proposed for the spectrophotometric simultaneous determination of cefoperazone and sulbactam in powders for injection. These transforms were successfully applied to UV spectra and ratio spectra to find suitable working wavelengths. Wavelet signal processing was proved to have distinct advantages (i.e. higher peak intensity obtained, additional smooth function and scaling factor process eliminated) over derivative and Fourier transforms. Especially, a better resolution of spectral overlapping bands was obtained by the use of double signal transform in the sequences such as (i) spectra pre-processed by Fractional Wavelet Transform and subsequently subjected to Continuous Wavelet Transform or Discrete Wavelet Transform, and (ii) derivative - wavelet transforms combined. Calibration graphs for cefoperazone and sulbactam were recorded for the range 10-35 mg/L. Good accuracy and precision were reported for all proposed methods by analyzing synthetic mixtures of cefoperazone and sulbactam. Furthermore, these methods were statistically comparable to RP-HPLC.