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AlbunexR is an ultrasound contrast agent prepared by sonicating 5% human serum albumin to produce stable, air‐filled, albumin‐coated microspheres. It is an effective ultrasound contrast agent for use during echocardiography and other ultrasound radiological procedures. Current research is directed toward understanding the physics of the interaction of ultrasound with AlbunexR in tissue. A theoretical model describing the dynamics of these bubbles has been developed by assuming a solid elastic shell. The shell (1) supports a strain that counters the effect of surface tension and thus stabilizes the bubble against dissolution; (2) increases the stiffness of the bubble and thus raises the resonance frequency of the bubble significantly; (3) increases the effective damping of the bubble and thus reduces the scattering cross section of the bubble markedly. Experimental measurements of speed of sound, attenuation coefficient, and backscatter coefficient have been made as functions of acoustic frequency and gas ...

Albunex® is an ultrasound contrast agent prepared by sonicating 5% human serum albumin to produce stable, air‐filled, albumin microspheres. It is an effective ultrasound contrast agent for use with echocardiography and other ultrasound radiology procedures. The characteristics of Albunex that are responsible for the clinically observed high echogenicity of Albunex are discussed. Albunex is composed of a high concentration of noncoalescing microspheres (400–500 μ/nl) with a mean diameter of ≈4 μm and a shell thickness of 30–50 nm, as determined by particle analysis, light microscopy, and electron microscopy. Attenuation and backscatter measurements as a function of ultrasonic frequency and amplitude are reported for varying concentration and size distributions of Albunex.

The present invention is a novel method for producing real-time colorized, contrast enhanced images from a sequence of grey-scale video images obtained during diagnostic ultrasound. The particular colorizing scheme varies according to which information parameter is desired to be displayed in real-time. The information parameters used to colorize a segment of video images include: time-to-arrival, duration of brightening, and absolute brightening. Time-to-arrival colorization depicts the time that a given pixel achieves a given intensity threshold. Duration of brightening depicts the time that a given pixel's intensity stays above a given threshold. Absolute brightening depicts various threshold values obtained by the region's pixels.