Saccharide based contrast agents

“Microbubbles”, gaseous bubbles with microscopic diameters, are extremely effective scatterers of ultrasound. Because of their unique acoustic properties, microbubbles play a key role in the basic mode of action of ultrasound contrast media. This role is comparable to that of iodine in X-ray contrast media and of gadolinium in magnetic resonance contrast media [1, 2, 31]. However, single microbubbles, without any additional protection against gas diffusion (between gas bubble and carrier fluid, i.e. blood serum) have a very short lifetime of only a few seconds [4]. This is one of the reasons for the frequently described problems of reproducibility and efficacy with selfmade “contrast agents”. The underlying physico-chemical interactions of in vivo bubble stabilization are difficult and complex.